


The Animal Within

by AngeNoir



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, F/M, Human Experimentation, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-07
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-11-07 04:46:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 42
Words: 174,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/427047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>"See, there was more than just eco-warfare to hurt the bad guys. There was eco-warfare to <span class="u">better</span> the good guys."</em> </p><p>Chosen to receive an experimental injection, Jake Jensen manages to screw up the whole program. Rejected by the rest of his fellow experiments, he finds his way to Col. Clay's unit and lives his life as something... <em>other</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> So, standard disclaimer: I own no characters, just the idea (and there have been a bunch of good stories with the same idea, so I can't even claim I'm doing something completely original).
> 
> NOTE: I don't have direct family or friends in the military, let alone in Spec. Ops. I have therefore taken artistic license with housing/interaction/unit formation/basically-all-the-minutiae-in-the-military-beyond-killing-bad-guys. I would welcome any help to straighten that aspect of my story out!
> 
> This story starts out in my headcanon before the movie, moves through the movie, and will continue after the movie.
> 
> Constructive criticism welcomed!

Jacob Andrew Jensen, Corporal, was not your average Spec Ops soldier. First of all, Jacob Andrew Jensen had jumped into the army at the wonderful age of seventeen. He needed money for his sister, who’d needed the neonatal care after her asshole of a boyfriend up and left without even a text message. She hadn’t wanted to name her baby girl yet, but Jacob had still placed his hand on her swelling belly and been amazed that there was a little _person_ growing in there. His baby girl – okay, not just his, but c’mon, saying ‘the baby girl’ seemed so impersonal – had a bit of trouble with her health, and needed a lot of care, and so hey, Jacob didn’t really need to complete two more years of school to write a long boring paper that wouldn’t guarantee him a job with healthcare for his big sis and his baby girl. The army seemed like the perfect idea. And so much cooler than writing his Master’s thesis, anyhow.

Second of all, Jacob Andrew Jensen had kinda a big problem with authority. Like, a huge problem. Practically the size of a planet or something. He had no difficulty going through Basic, but he did have a problem with pissy COs who thought they needed to bust his balls to get him to respect them. So he got stuck with a desk jockey job, in the tech department, and while he loved the computers, loved stripping them apart and putting them back together to make them better, faster, he needed… more. More movement, more action, more _distraction_ , and that really wasn’t high priority at a desk. The other techies were regularly loaned out to teams that would need tech support of some kind, and while Jacob missed being a part of a team, at least no one was telling him to shut up every other minute. Okay, maybe it was now every five minutes, because apparently it was really difficult for the techs to do anything when he was talking, but it was just so _easy_ to do everything given to him. And if he kept up his Basic training, kept going to the range and god knew from the amount of CAPE he got he kept in shape, well. Just ‘cause the other techs didn’t have the need to didn’t mean that the physical exercise didn’t calm him down sometimes.

And third of all? Spec Ops was so far off Jacob Andrew Jensen’s chart he hadn’t ever thought he’d actually get into the program. But, apparently, someone with the amount of technological genius that Jacob had just couldn’t be left to hack the Pentagon and NORAD and anything else that would take up his copious free time. So now he had better training, a keener mind, and was still bounced from team to team. And he honestly didn’t think it was all his fault! Really. And maybe it was a bit of a rub that no CO could stand him for longer than six months – but really, Jacob was getting a whole new perspective of the world! Liberia, Afghanistan, the Balkans, China…

So he wasn’t really a normal Spec Ops soldier. Which meant that he was _not_ the army’s first choice for the formula.

Ah, yes. The _formula_.

Jacob could just hear the woo-woo sounds behind that word.

See, there was more than just eco-warfare to hurt the bad guys. There was eco-warfare to _better_ the good guys.

More science fiction than science _fact_. But hey. If the nice doctors in white coats said this little injection will find his ‘inner animal’ and bring it to the forefront to create the ultimate predator, well, then, who was he to argue? Even if he was the first (perhaps only) volunteer from this sixth wave of recruiting tests.

So he said to himself as he stared up at the bright lights about seven years after he first signed up, the anesthetics hissing through the face-mask.

And then it was lights out Cpl. Jacob Jensen, and soon he’d get to see his inner predator.

He couldn’t _wait_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I will say that this work is currently a WIP, and I intend to update weekly, not daily, but since my last chapter was really just an intro I'd go ahead and post the first full one now. This story is a result from a successful NaNoWriMo (my first success there!) so it is currently hovering around 51k+ words, and goes right up to the beginning of the movie. To force myself to complete it, I've started posting.
> 
> Thank you all for reading!
> 
> See end notes for disclaimer.

“It’s not exactly expected.”

Jacob quirked an eyebrow at the doctors as the bravest tried to explain how the unexplainable happened. Behind him, other doctors and medical techs fretted and hemmed and hawed and did their best to figure out what, exactly, had gone wrong.

“Obviously, we just need to perfect the screening process.”

Jacob decided staring at them would not change the fact that, once again, he was _different_ , a freak among freaks, if you would. Instead, he transferred his gaze to the small window set in the wall of the military hospital. “So, now what?”

The doctor, interrupted, eyed him a bit nervously. “What do you mean, Corporal?”

“I mean, now what happens with me? I’m not what you ‘expected’. I shouldn’t have gotten through your ‘screening process.’ So. Now what?”

The elderly man peered at the clipboard in front of him, silver wire-rimmed glasses slipping down his hooked nose. “Well,” he began, and stopped, as if waiting for one of his various helpers to come to his aid. After a moment, he continued, “Well, we’ll just have to – to place you in another unit. This – this need not affect your life.”

Jacob snorted out a laugh.

If the doctor was any younger, he’d be biting his lip nervously. As it was, he instead slid the black pen behind his ear, ran a hand through silvery black hair. “I’ll have to talk to your current handler, figure out what happens next. Don’t go anywhere.”

He left, and the various nurses seemed to take that as some kind of signal, for in moments Jacob was alone in the hospital room.

“Yeah. Like I’ve got somewhere to go?” he murmured wearily.

***

So another drawback to his whole unwanted, unexpected, and frankly unspoken (seriously, he knew _what_ but not _what kind_ , and that was all kinds of fucked up, because he’d like to know what was living inside him now, exactly) ‘inner animal’ was that he no longer was just human, especially not to the Beast Corps (the nickname he came up with, thank you very much, because the number of men and women who participated in the formula program was so ridiculously tiny that everyone knew everyone) who saw him as _prey_.

Take, for example, Sergeant Doyle.

Sergeant Doyle was one of the few men on base who stood more than four inches taller than Jake, who outweighed him by more than fifty pounds. From the rumors, Doyle’s ‘inner animal’ was a black grizzly bear.

And Jake’s ‘inner animal’ was nowhere near as aggressive as any predator, let alone a _grizzly_.

Doyle took great pleasure in making snide remarks, taunting and teasing. Trying to trip Jake; trying to corner him. Good-natured ribbing, the COs called it – Jake knew that it was more, and that Doyle would really try and get him put out of commission. After all, since the scientists’ ‘failure’ with Jacob’s case, there were no more soldiers getting the injection until they figured out how Jake had slipped through their (supposedly) rigorous screening. Doyle’s buddy, some Private that Jake hadn’t heard about before, had been next in line after Jake to get the injection, and now was waiting for the scientists to figure out what went wrong.

So Doyle was, in a word, pissed.

And Jake was getting tired of avoiding and sidestepping the guy’s huge ego and huger bad temper.

Hah. ‘Huger’.

Jake loved the English language sometimes.

So when he’d been out running for his PT in the morning, and Doyle was lounging against a tree by the trail, Jake was, understandably, fed up. He slowed down his fast jog, coming to a standstill as he met Doyle’s gaze levelly.

“Out for a run?” Doyle smirked.

Jake refrained – just barely – from rolling his eyes. One, it was obvious what he was doing – did Doyle _have_ to ask? And secondly, that joke _so_ wasn’t funny.

Only, Jake couldn’t quite stop himself from taking a step back when Doyle pushed off the tree and took a step forward. Inside his head, his inner animal was breathing in his ear _runFLEEpredatorsurvival!_ and he had difficulty controlling it. Abruptly, he felt intense anger at the trainers for the soldiers who had undergone the injection – they hadn’t bothered to train him, as they dismissed his animal as something useless in combat, and so he had no idea how to stand his ground as a man when half of him now wanted to run like an animal. A _prey_ animal.

He was stronger than that.

Oddly enough, it was that line of thinking that suddenly curbed his desire to flee. The general temperament of his animal was to run first, yes, but it could be vicious when cornered and had, thank-you-very-much-stupid-trainers-who-knew-nothing-about-his-animal-at-all-and-shouldn’t-pretend-they-did, been used in wars before to great effect.

Doyle took another step forward, an inhuman light flickering in his eyes and his skin color starting to change, grow hairier. And, for the first time, Jake reached for his animal.

And changed.

***

_Power. Strength._

_Muscle slid smoothly over bone, eyesight and perceptions changed. Muscle GREWmassedHEAVY and he snorted, eyes rolling because in front of him was PREDATOR and he was PREY and he had to flee, run, run, run, RUN_

_ no. _ __

_He gave half a second’s thought, wheeling, front legs and head thrown back as he screamed terror – but also anger. FLEE._

_ no. he has no right. we are right. he is wrong. _

_He didn’t know where that thought came from, but heavyblackfurTEETHroaringCHARGING was coming and he had to run, now –_

_But something wouldn’t let him. So, he had only one option left._

_Fight_.

***

“Well, young man, you’ve put us through a lot of trouble.”

Jake blinked open weary eyes. He felt sore, tired, and he ached everywhere – in his head, specifically. What had happened?

“Proving our screening process wrong, then getting into a fight of all things with Sgt. Doyle…”

His tongue felt heavy, slow. “Whuh-ppend?”

Nimble hands pressed against his shoulder. “Corporal, are you awake? Coherent?”

“Yuhh.”

Those fingers tapped against his neck briefly before the presence moved, then was back, placing something cool and thin against the bridge of Jake’s nose. Jake was suddenly aware he could smell _applespiceFOOD_ and his stomach grumbled. There were other scents, too, and he gasped a little as he smelled _painfearangeryhatredPAINdeathsickness_. “Whuh-gowino?”

“I’m sorry, Corporal, you aren’t speaking clearly.” Voice high, sweet, gentle, and there were vibrations of footsteps that let him know the weight of the person standing there, a scent of _femaleSOFT_ in the air that he blinked at and tried to force his eyes open.

“Whuh-goin-on?” he finally managed to get past uncooperative lips.

“Ah.” There was a pause, tapping of feet, a draft of air and click of a metal latch and this overload of sensory information was _not_ going to help his ADHD at all, it really wasn’t, and then a new person entered the room – _maleHARDfrustratedsurprised_ and the scent of _metalgunpowederVIOLENCEcontrol_. Jake figured now, more than before, it was important to open his eyes. Maybe even salute.

“Corporal.”

“Ssih?” he slurred, eyes slowly dragging open.

Before him stood the General on base, and Jake abortively tried to salute.

A lighter-colored blur – it took Jake a moment to focus on the doctor who was at his side now – grabbed at his wrist and held his hand still. “No, don’t move, not yet.”

“At ease, soldier.”

The strong voice – not particularly kind, but not harsh, either – had a greater effect on Jake than the soft restraint, and he stopped trying to lift his hand. “Whuh-goin-on-ssih?” he croaked.

“Sgt. Doyle has stated that you ran him down and attacked him, forcing him to call on his newfound talent the army gave him to defend himself. Of course, the entire reason you have never been trained in your talent was because the scientists and eggheads and trainers figured that, as a failure of the screening system, you would be useless, run from a fight, and were, actually, debating giving you an honorable discharge and sending you on your way.”

Jake might not be completely coherent, but his mind was sharp, and he knew what the General was saying, and he _heartily_ disagreed and tried to make his position known, but a sharp look from the General silenced him. Damn his inner animal anyway.

“ _However_ ,” the General said sternly, “despite Sergeant Doyle pretty much laying your front leg – your arm – open to the bone, you have in turn given Sergeant Doyle a broken collarbone, cracked ribs, and a multiple-fractured leg. All _without_ the training we have given to the others who have undergone this procedure to control their animal and the flow of information. You not only transformed on your own, you have come back to your human mind and are actively interacting with me, and you controlled your animal side to both keep from running, which is what we assumed you would do, and attacked without killing – because rest assured, until we could pull you apart, you were only repelling, not outright attacking.”

There wasn’t much Jake could say in the first place, due to his complete inability to speak coherently, and there wasn’t anything he could think to say in this specific case anyway, so he waited.

“Well, then. With everything you’ve shown and the higher up’s disinclination to lose the asset you represent, you’ll be given training for your talent and reassigned to a team, put back into commission. Well done, soldier. Well done.”

Movement – it took Jake a minute to realize that the general was leaving, and that the doctor was fluttering back to his side. Swallowing hard, he muttered, “Whuhs-ong-whi-m-eyes?”

“You are still trying to adjust from your transformation – predatory animals have their eyes front-facing, like humans, but you have your eyes set on either side of your head, which not only gives you a wider range of vision but actually splits your vision into two fields. Your human mind is still trying to reintegrate your field of vision.”

The doctor began to move away, murmuring to herself as she went over his chart. Jake was content to let his eyes fall shut and let his brain try and catch up to what had happened. Apparently, he managed to keep his animal from running and not only that, but got in some pretty good licks. Part of that, of course, was because he knew the trainers taught the predators to hold back, control themselves, so Doyle hadn’t been fighting all out, but hey, he apparently made a good impression on the brass and was going to get training, not be regulated to the back-end anymore and actually get to work with his talent, integrate it so that he didn’t have to worry about transforming and his animal just running off with his body.

Which reminded him. He still didn’t know exactly what he was. And he didn’t exactly have the linguistic skill at the moment to ask, but he sure as hell was going to try.

“Dktrr.”

The presence was at his side, he could smell, and he was slowly subduing the desire to snort, to fight, to kick against the smells that surrounded him. Hospitals, he figured, must either all smell like this or this room was special. Either way, he was, actually, used to having to try and confine his attention to one thing because of his ADHD so he might, actually, be able to get this under control, but that didn’t change that he wanted to know what the hell he was –

“Did you say something, Corporal?”

“Whut-mm-I?”

There was a moment of hesitation. “You… do not know what animal you are?”

Jake managed to shake his head, mimicking his animal. “Know-whut-I-am.”

“I’m not quite sure what you’re asking, Corporal Jensen.”

“Bruh-eed.”

Another pause, and then movement – papers flipping. “You are – it says a grey Moroccan Barb Horse, Corporal. Is that what you were looking for?”

Jake smiled and let out a soft sigh. “Yeeahh. Thnkss, Doc.”

“You’re very welcome, Corporal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: As with the military, I have not worked on a farm or ranch with horses before, so if my terminology/description is weak, that's why.
> 
> I will say that I wouldn't have picked a horse as Jake's other form if I wasn't challenged to do so and make it work, so thanks Andy! =D
> 
> The idea/picture of Jake's horse can be found [here](http://www.ponybox.com/upload/news/806_image2.jpg).


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently I managed to repost chapter 2 as chapter 3, so here I am trying again. I'll figure this out eventually, I swear.
> 
> Current word-count of the whole story is upwards of 53k (bad week for writing, what with the vast amounts of Avengers fanfic I've consumed [and is it odd that I can expand my affection for Jensen's craziness to cover Tony Stark's craziness?] and a [couple of] random Avengers fic ideas bouncing around my head). Also, I will say that my chapters are going to greatly varied, as I wrote the story initially by jumping POV of the Losers according to what was (I felt) needed at the time to look at different situations. Therefore, I have a few chapters hovering around the 1.5k mark, a chapter or two hovering around the 5k mark, and one chapter upwards of 10k. o.O
> 
> Again, no knowledge of the military, so no idea if this is really how a soldier gets transferred from one unit to another. Citing artistic license and willing suspension of disbelief (after all, we're all handling a 200 lb man transforming to a 900+ lb horse rather well, right?).
> 
> Going along with the whole 'no real knowledge of the military', this chapter is not beta'd, so any mistakes you see or any military-life mistakes you want to correct, let me know and I'll do my best to incorporate as much realism as possible without losing too many elements I'll need for a shape-shifting universe to work!

Lieutenant Colonel Franklin Clay eyed the general warily. It wasn’t the first time that the general had asked him to take on a troublemaker, and he didn’t really think it’d be the last, but Clay had refused the last couple, passing them on to other colonels and lieutenant colonels and leaders of groups that could handle soldiers that were too sharp, too needy, or too wild for the general rank and file units. The last troublemaker he’d taken on had been a long time back, at least two years, and Alvarez hadn’t really been a troublemaker, just a kid who needed some stability. Now Alvarez was a seamless pillar of his group, helping reel back Roque and even Clay himself a couple of times. This kid?

“Sir, I’m not quite sure my group –”

“Clay, I’m not gonna lie to you, this kid’s got a list of problems, but on the outside he’s got a good history, and you asked for a tech. I can’t keep him in his current unit, and he has to be in a unit with a CO who’s been trained to handle the formulaic soldiers. You’ve got one under you already.”

“A predator, sir, a cougar that most likely is one of the horse’s most natural predators here in the US,” Clay said pointedly.

The general let out a sigh. “This kid, Clay, had no training whatsoever and bested a grizzly. Held him off, gave as good as he got, came back to his human mind. Since then, he’s been on a slew of missions that cannot under any circumstances be termed easy. He’s been able to adjust to living with different kinds of predators –”

“But never a cougar.”

The general narrowed his eyes at Clay, who obligingly quieted. “Is a cougar all that different than a tiger? A wolf? Two lions?”

Clay said nothing; he knew better.

“A probationary period. I know the kid’s a handful. I know his personality’s got a lot to be desired, but part of that is just bad handling by COs, not a personal choice. He’s got a lot of skill, and at this point he’s heading down towards a dishonorable discharge, and the brass might not want to lose such a good tech but until he can find a unit he can at least cooperate with for more than six months, he’s got no one defending him.”

Clay looked over the file. Corporal Jacob Jensen, a resume of impressive computer skills and confirmation that he’d gone through Spec Ops training and passed. Maybe not flying colors, but not just barely-passing, either – a good, average score. Skilled with Slavic and Asian languages, used to undercover work.

“Where is he?” Clay sighed.

“His current unit’s barracks. Under Colonel Davis, so –”

Clay nodded, knowing the guy and wincing inwardly. Davis wasn’t exactly a guy you handed a troublemaker – you gave Davis the strong and well-trained soldiers, and he’d make a functioning team. Still, maybe they’d hoped Davis’ unit could balance this kid out. He’d have to see.

***

Davis’ team had just come back from an op, and Clay stepped into the room to see the men lounging on the cots, the usual lewd and sarcastic remarks flying back and forth as they came off the high of a success. It took them a minute for them to realize a commanding officer was there, and then they came to attention, saluting hm.

“At ease, boys. I’m looking for Colonel Davis – he around?”

“He’s at command, sir,” the youngest-looking one said, even as the biggest guy made a face. “Placing in his report.”

Clay eyed them a moment, glancing around. He didn’t see the guy from the file he had in his hands, and figured he could get a sense of the guy’s character. “I’ve got some transfer papers – for Corporal Jacob Jensen? Request has already been processed, and figured I might as well walk the kid over to my unit’s housing and give him the rundown.”

A discomfited look passed over the young one’s face, even as the bigger guy audibly growled. Clay flicked his eyes over to the big guy. “Talent, soldier?”

“Yes, sir,” the big one said. He looked faintly Native American, with hints of African American in his blood, creating a large frame that was imposing. There weren’t many people that could make Clay feel like a small guy – Roque, his XO, was one of them – but this guy was all muscle, with that inhuman light in the back of his eyes that Clay had learned to recognize as a soldier who’d undergone the Procedure.

“What form, soldier?”

“Jaguar, sir.”

“Jags’ one of the first Procedural Soldiers,” the young one said. Clay turned his gaze from the bigger soldier – nicknamed ‘Jags,’ apparently – to the younger one, ignoring the other two who didn’t seem inclined to talk.

“Your name, soldier?”

“Private Ryan Anderson, sir.”

Clay raised an eyebrow. “Private?”

One of the guys from behind – a slight Asian male, with bright eyes and an easy smile, chucked Private Anderson on the soldier. “Green as they come, sir. This was the first real mission for him.”

“You ready for Spec Ops, private?”

“Sure as hell wanna be, sir.” Anderson’s grin was easy, not haunted or terrified like he’d expect from a kid who didn’t look to be legal drinking age.

Jaguar smiled – and if the smile was a bit dark, well, Procedural Soldiers always were a little off after the injection – and said proudly, “Kid’s a crack driver. Best army’s seen in a while, sir. Might even give your transport spec a run for his money, once he’s got a few more missions under his belt. Sir.”

Clay smiled in return at the embarrassed flush on the kid’s face. The kid might very well be, but his Linwood Porteous (Pooch, but the nickname didn’t come from an injection) was one of the very best. “Perhaps one day my transport specialist will sit down with you at mess, feel out the competition,” he said genially. “Well. Private Anderson. Sergeant –”

“Cooper, sir. Sergeant Cooper,” Jags supplied.

“Cooper, then.” Clay nodded to them. “I’ll head over, see if I can find Colonel Davis and Corporal Jensen.”

Cooper snorted. “Good luck, sir. If you ask me, you’re taking on a kid who ought never’ve been in Spec Ops.”

This was the type of gossip Clay had been looking for, and he half-turned to eye Cooper speculatively. “Really, Sergeant?”

Anderson was worrying his lip, but the white guy in the back, about Clay’s size, scratched the back of his neck. “Jensen… he’s an acquired taste, sir. But he’s a mouthy sonuvabitch, and he’s… high maintenance.”

“A fucking pansy, when it comes down to it,” Cooper muttered.

The white guy hitched a shoulder. “Doesn’t get his hands dirty all that much, but he’s a big guy, and he’s got the creds to be in Spec Ops somehow. Got a problem with following directions sometimes.”

That seemed to be the farthest anyone was ready to go, and Clay wasn’t going to push, not when he didn’t want to be completely biased against the corporal before he ever came to the unit. Still, it seemed to confirm what the general had told him – a smart-talking kid who had issues.

Then again, what Spec Operative _didn’t_ have issues?

***

Clay didn’t run into Jensen, but he ran into Davis leaving the command center. Davis saw him and grunted. “Ain’t got no time for your team whining about my boys’ behavior.”

Clay bit back his instinctive response – considering that Clay felt Pooch had _every_ right to beat the shit out of one of Davis’ ‘boys’ for making remarks about Pooch’s fiancé, Clay wasn’t about to call it ‘whining.’ Instead, he remarked blandly, “Heard you had a tech you were getting rid of.”

There was a disgusted sigh, and Davis shook his head. “Fucking kid can’t keep his fucking mouth shut and argues in the field. I’m sick and tired of putting up with his shit and his better-than-you attitude. Why?”

“Well, so happens my team really needs a steady tech for the jobs we keep getting sent on, and since you’re letting one go, I was thinking of picking him up.”

Davis curled his lip in a sneer. “You mean the general don’t want his precious experiment getting bobtailed and sent to prison for treason in the field.”

That was certainly a different perspective than Clay had heard it put. “Treason?”

There was a long moment of careful consideration, and then Davis shrugged dismissively. “Kid doesn’t obey in the field, argues with me, disrespectful… to be quite frank, fighting in the field can count as treason.”

“That’s a long stretch, Davis.”

“You think you can do any better with him? Be my guest,” Davis snarled in response. “My boys are fed up trying to babysit him, and fucking Anderson can do better at his job than he can.”

Clay held back his tongue – Davis got results, and was higher rank than he was, so he didn’t get to argue for a kid he really didn’t know all that well in the first place. Instead, he inclined his head just barely. “Well, then, Davis, you won’t object about me assigning him to my unit.”

“Fuck, no. Keep him the hell away from me, though, and good riddance to him.” Davis paused, then frowned. “You gotta Procedure Soldier, don’tcha?”

One of the second wave of Procedural Soldiers, in fact, so Clay knew enough about the soldiers and their way of behavior. If he remembered right, Jensen had been the first of the fifth wave and had put an end to the entire process until they managed to correct the process. “Yeah.”

“Kid don’t do well with other Procedures. His form’s practically useless, all in all, and sets off the Procedures something fierce. They can’t get a handle on him and their form’s instincts.” Davis stopped at the door of the barracks and gave Clay a hard gaze. “You have problems and complaints about the kid, don’t say I didn’t warn you. He’s not cut out to be a soldier – but that’s why they sent him to you, King of the Losers, yeah?”

“Just be sure to send him over when you see him next,” Clay replied mildly.

Davis sneered and closed the door in his face.

“That went pretty well, considering,” Clay murmured. There was nothing more to learn here, from the corporal’s old group. Now, Clay wanted to talk with his doctors and the scientists in charge of his formulaic change.

***

“Corporal Jacob Jensen? Jake?”

Clay smiled charmingly at the pretty woman behind the desk, pleased that she blushed even though he was old enough to be her father, likely enough. “That’s the one. He’s the most current Procedural Soldier, and I would just like to go over his medical history and talk to the scientist in charge of his case, if that’s possible.”

“Oh, well… I can get you Dr. Reynolds, who was the most recent doctor to work with him, but Dr. Engels is at his lab and is actually going over the screening process for Procedural Soldiers right now.”

Pouring on a little bit more charm, Clay tapped his fingers against the countertop. “Well, my questions for Dr. Engels are about the screening process and what should have happened to what did happen – wouldn’t that be an acceptable interruption?”

The young secretary blinked at him, biting at her lip as she eyed the computer before her. The door opened and the draft blew her straight brown hair into her eyes – impatient, she pushed it aside before looking at him with surprisingly sharp honey-gold eyes. “I’d still have to ask him, and Dr. Engels doesn’t respond to his email or pager while he’s in his lab.”

Clay schooled his face to keep from showing his disappointment at this statement. “Well,” he began, drawling it out as he tried to find a way around that.

“However,” the woman murmured, “Jake’s a good kid. And Dr. Engels’ lab is on the fourth floor, labeled pretty clearly. Just be prepared for irritability – Dr. Engels doesn’t like interruptions all that much. Do you want to see Dr. Reynolds first, or after?”

“Ah…” Clay blinked at her, a pleased and genuine smile appearing on his face. “Before, I would think, thank you very much.”

The young woman nodded, typing on the keyboard before looking back up at him. “Dr. Reynolds is doing rounds on the third floor right now, so if you go on ahead I’m sure the nurses on that floor would know where she is exactly.”

Clay wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Instead, he ducked his head as if tipping an imaginary hat and drawled, “Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate it.”

As the secretary had promised, it hadn’t been difficult to find Dr. Reynolds. The nurses on duty on the third floor had pointed her out easily enough – a willowy redhead, lines of silver running through the vibrant red, with snapping blue eyes and freckles across a face that had aged gracefully. She was flipping through a chart, murmuring with a nurse, when he approached her.

“Dr. Reynolds?”

She turned to look at him inquisitively. “Sir? Ah – Colonel. Clay, am I right? I don’t think I have any of your boys up here on this floor –”

“You don’t, ma’am,” he responded, an easy smile on his face. “But you’ve recently dealt with someone who’s being transferred to my team, and I just wanted to get a feel for him before meeting him myself.”

“I’m a bit busy, but if this won’t take long –”

Clay nodded. “Not long at all, ma’am. Just a couple of minutes.”

The nurse, a young man with glasses and a slight build, mumbled some excuse and took the chart back to the nurse’s station while Dr. Reynolds put out her hand. “Dr. Claire Reynolds, Colonel. Who’s the patient in question?”

“Jensen, Jacob Jensen? Corporal. The most recent Procedural Soldier?”

It took her a couple of minutes to think before her eyes lightened. “Ah. Jake, yes, I remember him. Smart-mouthed and sarcastic.”

Seemed to be a recurring adjective, but Clay didn’t do anything but smile. “That’s the one, I suppose.”

“I treated him after his first transformation as well as after this recent mission he got back from. A good kid, if a little on the wild side, with a sometimes awful sense of humor. Then again, quite a few of the soldiers here do not have a strictly clean sense of humor. What did you need to know?”

“Just basic medicals, ma’am – how was he, how is he at the moment. My team’s about to be deployed, and I need to know if I have to have him sit out the mission or if he’s up to joining in.” Clay smiled winsomely.

Dr. Reynolds frowned a little. “Well, I’d advise him to stay off his leg for a little while longer, but as long as you’re not expecting him to do the crazy acrobatic stunts I’ve seen Cougar do, you’ll be fine with him. He’ll be a bit sluggish since his painkillers are not the non-drowsy kind.” Hitching a shoulder, she made a dismissive movement with her hand. “But he can handle himself. He’s a good soldier, I’ll give him that, when he applies himself.”

“You know anything about his other form? Or should I talk to the scientist in charge for that?”

Dr. Reynolds considered for a moment, glancing around at the nurses bustling between rooms. “Dr. Engels can certainly tell you the temperament of his form, so it might be better for you to discuss that with him. I only know what I observed while he was in my hospital beds, so that might not be much help.”

“Well, if I haven’t taken up too much of your time already, that would be appreciated, ma’am,” Clay murmured. Any type of information right now could only help, and if she was willing he would take as much as she would let him.

She let out a soft sigh. “Let’s see. Most Procedurals don’t like being on a bed, especially when they’re in pain. They need a supervisor to hold them still because the pain makes them lash out, respond badly to treatments. He didn’t need that, though he was extremely skittish under my touch. He had difficulty seeing, adjusting from a horse’s vision to his own, and he seemed disinclined to move. Trusting, in a way, but part of that might just have been because I was a woman – he certainly tensed up when his commanding officer had come into the room, and he had tensed when the general had come in the time after his first transformation.”

Running a hand over her head, some wisps of hair escaped the short bun to fall along the side of her face and neck. “I can’t think of anything else. He was polite – in the beginning. The longer he stayed, the sharper his tongue got. Off-color jokes I can take, but he has a… a patronizing air about him. Like he knows he’s smarter than you and he’d prove it, too. Colonel, I really must get back to my rounds –”

“Of course.” Clay smiled. “Thanks for taking the time to speak with me – I do appreciate it.”

Dr. Reynolds smiled wearily. “Well, he’s got a certain charm, can’t help feeling a bit drawn in by him. You tell him I told you that he’s to go easy on that leg.” And with that, she was being tugged away by a young girl, directions about medications and procedures flying over Clay’s head. Clay watched her go – she was a beauty. Still, not quite his style. He went after more… hot-blooded personalities. Dr. Reynolds seemed too cool for his taste.

The stairs were easy enough to find, and up here there weren’t patient rooms – there were laboratories, scientists, and young interns who looked like they wanted to tell Clay to stop but lacked the spine to do so. Walking down the hall, he noticed there were engraved nameplates that indicated offices and labs, and paused by the lab that read ‘Engels, Head of IL5-S.’ The lab had a couple of young kids inside, moving about, but no one that seemed directly in charge. He wandered farther down a bit until he came upon an office, and inside were two men – one a gray-haired, steel-eyed elderly gentleman, and the other a younger, paunchier brown-haired man with expressive gestures.

“– cannot be the R-set questions. We’ve tested those time and time again. It’s got to be the VR-set questions – there had been anomalies in those before, with other candidates, remember?”

The elder man snorted indelicately. “The VR-set aren’t deciding factors in the decision. The problem isn’t the VR-set, because the VR-set doesn’t affect anything beyond whether the candidate is mentally ready for it. We need to know how an animal like a horse slipped past the R-set questions –”

Catching sight of Clay outside the door, the elder man’s mouth snapped shut and bushy eyebrows slammed down across the high forehead. “What are you doing here? Fourth floor is for authorized personnel only!”

“I’m looking for Dr. Engels. I am Colonel Franklin Clay, just been assigned one Corporal Jacob Jensen, and I aim to know more about this kid before I go along with this assignment. They say you’re in charge of the project, and the decision process.”

The younger man turned, revealing startlingly blue eyes for an otherwise completely average body type, face curious. “Corporal Jacob Jensen?” he repeated, as if unsure about the name.

“Oh, for pity’s sake, the horse, Robert,” the elder man growled, but his gaze never wavered from Clay’s black eyes. After a moment, he motioned for Clay to come in. “I am Dr. Rupert Engels, developer of the HA6-Z injection that the Procedural Soldiers are walking around with in their DNA now. If you have questions, ask them and leave – I’m very busy at the moment.”

Clay grinned amiably, though the deceptive acceptance never touched his eyes. “Well, then, doc, let me get straight to the heart of the matter. Why is this kid a horse? I thought the injection was only ever supposed to be for predators.”

Dr. Engels narrowed his eyes and made a disgusted gesture at the papers spread before him. “It was only supposed to be for predators.”

When no more information was forthcoming, Clay ventured, “So, this kid tested as a horse, so you went ahead and injected him?”

“No, no, see – he _didn’t_ test as a horse, that was the problem!” the second scientist interjected, then flushed when Dr. Engels glared and Clay glanced over at him. “Ah – I’m Robert, Robert Wutherman. I’m Rupert’s assistant – I was in the room with the subject before, during, and after the injection.”

Clay asked mildly, “Well, if he didn’t test as a horse, what did he test as?”

“Faugh.” Dr. Engels heaved an annoyed sigh and tapped one report absently with his fingers. “A German shepherd. A dog, which – while isn’t exactly the best of predators – is still a good choice. There’s a reason German shepherds are used with police forces and in the military so often, after all. And instead…”

“Horse,” Wutherman finished with a sigh. “We got a horse.”

Not sure where he was going with this, Clay ventured, “A specific kind of horse?”

“Oh, we can identify it down to the breed itself – a Moroccan Barb horse, one of the old lines that the nomadic tribes used to keep in their tents like a pet, an intelligent enough animal when it comes down to it, but utterly useless for modern warfare, what with rocket launchers and bombs and such. Not only is the Barb horse skittish and high-strung, it’s a hot-blooded horse, a raiding horse meant for bursts of speed and quick maneuverability. Again, intelligent, but difficult to handle. Docile, too – the nomads wouldn’t see anything wrong with keeping it in their tent like a dog, after all. But a horse is _much_ different from a dog, as we can see with the corporal.” Dr. Engels shifted through the paperwork.

While the elder man was looking through the stacks of paper, Wutherman picked up the thread of conversation. He was perched on the only bare edge of the desk, his white lab coat stretched over his middle, but that didn’t discourage him at all from waving his arms about as he explained, “The injection is designed, after all, to go through the subject’s body and draw out the animal that the person is most like – it’s a variance of the European formula, which creates werewolves that we’ve been having to neutralize – but the injection is partially a mental process. For example, if the subject has never heard of a bear, never seen a bear, doesn’t know what a bear is, the subject can’t be a bear even if, to the objective outsider, a bear would be the best animal suited for that subject. The injection is designed to work under the same principles as the WRWLFX-79 formula, only instead of forcing the subject into the ideal predator, the formula allows the subject to choose the animal. This is because with the WRWLFX-79 formula, there is a high mortality rate. Some subjects just can’t accept that animal at all, and others can accept outwardly that they become a wolf linked to the moon cycles but they always have a fear, or a dislike, of their form and self-destruct within six months.”

“Ah.” Dr. Engels pulled forth a stack of papers, flipping through them as he said with undisguised arrogance, “My formula has a zero mortality rate in subjects precisely because the formula gives their body a choice, and it is a choice that their subconscious approves of. Your corporal’s psych evaluation and fitness test listed him as an aggressive young man – the type we are looking for – and our only reservation was his dislike for authority. However, with these basic tests, we see that the subject is similar if not identical to many of the other successful subjects, and so we proceeded to move him through the screening process. All his choices, all the scenarios he was put through, showed him picking the aggressive route, the more powerful of options, the more fight-oriented choices.”

“The VR-set would have given us a deeper look into why the subject chose the fighting options when he clearly is not a predator at heart – there must a flaw in there somewhere,” Wutherman murmured, and Clay would swear he was pouting.

Dr. Engels glowered at his colleague, and Clay figured he wasn’t going to get much more out of them when he snapped back, “The R-set are specifically linked to the animals the subjects approve of or prefer to other animals, and a horse is a preference that should have shown on the R-set –”

Deciding to leave the two of them at it, Clay left the room and made his way back to his unit’s house.

***

Clay and his unit shared a house on base, and while none of his team were really good cooks, their sniper Carlos Alvarez could cook a mean enchilada. And his rice stew? Was out of this fucking world.

“Cougar’s cooking?” Clay called out when he entered the house and smelled the spice of Mexican cooking liberally in the air.

Sergeant Linwood Porteous was sitting on the couch, dressed in an undershirt and sweats, a phone to his ear. Probably talking with Jolene again – Clay had met with his transport specialist’s fiancé a few months back. Hell of a woman. At seeing Clay, Porteous – known as Pooch, but not because he was a Procedural Soldier like Cougar – smiled and gave a thumbs up. Pooch was a man of average height and build, but his brown eyes were sharp and his fingers nimble. Nor just their transport specialist, but their own personal handyman. Give Pooch a couple of wires and some duct tape, and he could give you a bomb. And he was pretty darn good with a reluctant microwave, too. Intentionally bald, he was lighter-skinned that Roque. Then again, only his dad had been African American; his mother had been Asian. It made for an interesting guy who Clay was proud to have on his team – and who was the sanest out of all of Clay’s unit.

“Well, at least we’ll have something decent to eat tonight. Why’s he cooking, though?”

Pooch made a seesawing motion with his hand, then gestured to the kitchen. Figuring it couldn’t hurt – Cougar sometimes got possessive of the kitchen when he was cooking, but never if someone just stood at the doorway and talked – Clay moved into the narrow hallway that led to the staircase and poked his head in the kitchen door.

William Roque, his second in command, was sitting at the tiny table in one of the chairs, wearing a long-sleeved black shirt over black jeans and thick hiking boots, a knife in his hand as he absently sharpened it. He and Cougar were apparently watching the game on the small TV, and Clay leaned against the doorframe until Cougar – most likely because of his animal senses – nodded at Clay. Roque saw the motion, glanced over and made a face at Clay. Roque was a big guy, the biggest one in his unit, heavily muscled and black as night. Black eyes and shortly cropped hair, along with a scar that ran down the right side of Roque’s face, bisecting his eyebrow and skipping his eye to continue down the tall man’s cheek.

In contrast, Cougar – Carlos Alvarez, but everyone in the unit called him Cougar – was a slight, short Mexican with traces of Native American blood in him. His trademark cowboy hat was perched on the back of one of the chairs as he moved with lithe grace through the kitchen. Cougar had been a scary sonuvabitch before, but with the injection became practically a lethal weapon in human form. His long black hair was pulled back in a ponytail today at the base of his neck, his black eyes calculating and flickering with an inhuman light that Clay had come to recognize as the trademark of all Procedural Soldiers. He was tanned, broad face with a short goatee, carefully trimmed, and the body of a swimmer or fencer instead of a wrestler like Roque. Today he was wearing a t-shirt without his customary vest, sneakers and a pair of jeans. Just lounging around, taking advantage of the downtime that was soon going to be over.

“Clay, what’d the old man want?” Roque asked, brusque and forthright as ever.

“Gotta transfer soldier coming into the unit,” Clay responded as he pulled a beer out of the fridge and popped the lid.

Cougar looked up, silent – he rarely spoke, not since Clay had lent him out on that Afghanistan mission about a year ago, and there wasn’t a day that went by that Clay cursed out the commanding officer who’d left his sniper behind – but Clay caught the question in that single upraised eyebrow, even as Roque made a sound of spitting. “A transfer?” he asked indignantly.

“Another Procedural Soldier – the newest.” Clay caught Cougar’s gaze, held it a moment. It took another few seconds before recognition appeared in Cougar’s gaze and a faint frown line appeared on his forehead.

From behind the two of them, Roque interjected, “Another one? I thought two predators in one unit threw them outta whack or something. Why are we taking another one in?”

“The newest one isn’t a predator,” Clay said, breaking his look with Cougar to meet Roque’s. “He’s a kid. Not as young as you, Cougs, but I think only a year older. They picked him to go through with it – why, I’m still not completely sure – but it didn’t turn out the way they had expected it to.”

Roque tapped the knife against his knee. “Not a predator?”

“Nope.”

Cougar cleared his throat. “Controlled?” His voice was soft as compared to Roque’s loud, and Clay turned towards him again as he considered the question.

“Apparently, managed to transform and return to his human mindset without any training, which certainly speaks for some type of control, but I get the feeling that we got this kid because he’s bucking the system a bit too hard.” Clay hitched a shoulder. “Actually, I was a bit surprised the kid hasn’t already shown.”

“Can’t stop taking in them losers, huh, Clay,” Roque grunted, but there was a fond note in the depths of that voice. Very, very deeply hidden, but then again Clay had been with Roque for a long while and knew the slight intonations and indications that signaled his true mood.

Taking a swig from his beer, Clay smiled crookedly. “I’ll be up in my room; let me know when the kid gets here.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm gonna do my best to update every Thursday, depending on how fast I can write and if my posting schedule outdistances the amount I have down.
> 
> Current word count is sitting at 58k+. Yay me! Though I didn't meet my intended goal... Still. Better than last week, right? Small victories, I know.

Jake hefted his duffel bag higher against his shoulder and eyed the house warily. After all, he hadn’t exactly been looking forward to a transfer. He’d hopped enough teams recently, thank you very much, and he’d much rather not keep doing this over and over again. Still, Davis couldn’t stand him and he couldn’t stand Davis, not to mention Cooper scared the fuck out of him. So here he was again, with another commander and another Procedural Soldier and a unit that probably had heard nothing good and everything bad about him.

Sometimes he was just so fucking tired of it all.

He wasn’t a quitter, though; hadn’t ever been one, and he was going to make this work for him if it was the last thing he did. Steeling himself, he brought his hand up and knocked on the door.

It took a little while, and a second knock, before the door was opened by a short – okay, not short, because Jake was tall, he knew that, but still, not exactly a giant – African American, bald, eyes sharp and a little curious. “Can I help you?” he asked. Not exactly a fast voice, but not a drawl from the southern states, either. Maybe one of the eastern states that wasn’t New York with its rapid-fire speech patterns…

“Corporal Jacob Jensen, transfer,” Jake said gruffly.

For a moment longer, the man just stood there, eyes confused, before they cleared and the guy nodded. “Right, right, Clay mentioned that briefly. Um, sure, come on in. Let me just find Clay and let him know you’re here – ah, by the way, my name’s, eh, Porteous. Linwood Porteous, but you can just call me Pooch – everyone else does.”

Pooch, huh? Was this the other procedural soldier, then? Jake eyes Linwood – Pooch – for a moment before shaking his head a little. No, this wasn’t a predator – if he _had_ been a predator, Jake would have been able to sense practically right off the bat. “You’re the… other Procedural…?” Jake trailed off.

The guy laughed. “Naw, man, just Pooch. Nickname comes from way back, before Basic, even. No, The other guy that’s Procedural you’ll meet soon enough, but – ah, there you are, Clay.”

Jake watched the elderly man walk into the room. Okay, not elderly; scratch the elderly. Though his guy was easily in his mid-forties, maybe even late forties, he still had it. No soft paunch had developed, no pale skin and aloof gaze. This guy got just as dirty as his men and most likely was in the thick of it half the time, if not all the time. Tall, but not as tall as Jake (again, not many people _were_ as tall as Jake) – a decent height. Solid fighter, but no heavyweight. Black hair, peppered with grey, and a scruffy beard. A nose that had been broken once or twice before. Soft brown eyes, warm, that probably got him into and out of a lot of trouble as a younger soldier.

That, however, was the information that his eyes and human mind gave him.

Inside there was a whole other commentary running alongside – the smell of _maleMENmany_ and _woodsmokeFIREdanger_ and _matedlovedwarmthKIND_ along with body language and sounds. It was a lot of information piling in, distracting to the extreme, and for a long moment Jake just stood there, breathing in, trying to get a feel for it.

Yet… this guy seemed to get it. This Clay, his new commanding officer. ‘Cause, unlike Davis who had immediately taken him throughout the house on a tour, Clay leaned back against the wall, motioning with his chin at Pooch for some privacy. The other guy obeyed easily enough, murmuring something about finding someone in the kitchen – the game was on, Jake could tell, hell, Jake could hear practically every creak of the chair beneath a body that was heavy, maybe even bigger than Jake’s, and maybe _that_ was the Procedural Soldier, too big for Jake to adequately defend himself –

“Son.”

Jake’s eyes darted back over to Clay, who watched him calmly, voice measured and eyes cool.

“Corporal Jacob Jensen, my name is Lieutenant Colonel Franklin Clay, and I’ll be your commanding officer for three months. During that time, I’m gonna treat you like one of my team, and that means there’s one alpha here and that’s me, you understand? Everything else, anything else, that’s all secondary. If I want a tightly run group, I’m gonna get one. At the end of the three months, you prove you have what it takes to stick around, you stick around. Otherwise, you’re shuffled out of the military structure for good. You catch what I’m saying so far?”

At least Clay seemed to realize it took a bit for the other form to categorize the scents and sounds and sights, and was giving Jake time. As it was, he had regained enough of himself to nod and reply, “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now, then, you’ve met Pooch, my transport specialist. I’m sure you can hear in the kitchen my other two men – there’s Roque, my XO, and there’s Cougar, my sniper. Cougar’s the other Procedural Soldier, and yes, like Pooch, his nickname predates Basic, but it turns out it’s an apt nickname, because that’s what Cougar is in his other form. You are?”

Realizing he was expected to give an answer, Jake swallowed and readied himself for ridicule. “A horse, sir,” he said, throwing defiance into the words as he dared the other man to make something of it.

But Clay did nothing of the sort. Instead, he nodded decisively. “You ever use your form in the field? Around other Procedural Soldiers? Around soldiers in general?”

Licking his dry lips, Jake responded, “Not in the field, no sir. And I’ve had no reason to use my form around other Procedural Soldiers. Since the injection, I haven’t been around any normal soldiers unless you count the non-Procedural Soldiers in the units I’ve been in since injection.” Feeling vaguely like he was under trial, he fought not to fidget, not to change the living room into a spot of cleanliness in an otherwise very bachelor-pad-environment. So he had OCD, so sue him. It was the very picture of a guy’s living room – gaming consoles dumped on the low coffee table and a plasma screen stretched across the far wall from the leather couch and armchair. A low bookcase held lines of DVDs and video games, and he wondered oddly which one of his team actually played video games.

“Well, it’s me, Pooch, and Roque as non-Procedures, so you’re gonna have to adjust to that. We’ll do our best to accommodate you and give you space, but you’re gonna have to figure out how to deal with the tension between you and Cougar. Of course, there might not even be tension, but cougars are used to attacking animals like horses from above, so just keep that in mind when talking with him.” Clay pushed off the doorway – looking around the entryway, Jake realized that the living room was essentially the entryway, and beyond it was a hall. The doorway to the hall was where Clay had been leaning, and when Clay walked into the hallway Jake followed.

“Kitchen’s to your right, and you’re more than welcome to take from the fridge what you need. Just remember that you gotta be courteous to us all, and it’s only decent, if you’re the first one up, to do something about a meal. And if something’s specifically earmarked for someone, don’t go nosing into it.”

Clay paused, moving to let Jake look past him into the kitchen. Directly opposite to the doorway that led from the living room to the hallway, the kitchen door was set in one corner of the kitchen between the refrigerator and the beginning of the cabinets. Pooch wasn’t in sight, but the smells coming from the oven would probably bring him down soon. As it was, there were two other men in the room – a Mexican male leaning over the counter, chin propped in his hands and a cowboy hat slung low over his eyes, and a large African American male, large enough to dwarf Jake and not many could do that, thumped the chair in front of him and called foul.

“Not like they can hear you, Roque,” Clay interrupted.

The two men turned to look at Clay – and, a little past Clay and taller (god he hated being above-average-sized sometimes) than Clay, their eyes fell on Jake, and he tentatively smiled. The smile froze, however, when Jake recognized in the smaller male that otherworldly form that watched from behind those otherwise serene eyes.

 _RUNpredatordangerRUN_ his inner animal screamed at him, rearing back, and Jake tensed all his muscles, holding himself completely still. The other man’s nostrils flared, and those black eyes took on a slightly orange cast for a brief second.

“I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that Cougar’s the most controlled Procedural Soldier on base,” Clay rumbled, and Jake was absurdly grateful that his commanding officer remained between him and the kitchen with the _predatorDANGERrunrunrunrunrun_. On that note, though, came shame. He was a fucking special operations soldier, and fucking hell he could, and he fucking _would,_ act like it. That was enough to put steel in his spine and he took a step forward, his initial instinct to flee stifled. Clay obligingly moved out of his way.

“Corporal Jacob Jensen,” he said, voice level and even a little light-hearted as he extended his hand specifically to the short Mexican male that had been identified as Cougar – which, as Clay had pointed out to him earlier, was a nickname that predated the injection but was still extremely appropriate. If this guy was Cougar, that meant the other guy was Roque, and Jake made a mental note to look up the team’s psych evals and medical records and mission records. Not that he was really going to forget, but it was important to remember, ‘cause Roque looked like a hard sonuvabitch and Jake had run against enough hard-nosed soldiers and officers to know that he really ought to steer clear of them completely if given the chance.

The Mexican – Cougar – took his hand after a moment, blunt and calloused fingers gripping tight for less than half a second before relaxing into a friendly handshake. “Sergeant Carlos Alvarez.”

“Alvarez, huh? You prefer Cougar?”

“ _Si_.”

“Alrighty then,” Jake said genially, even as the guy took back his hand and his eyes flickered once over Jake before turning back to the television. Not that Jake minded being dismissed by a predator, but it kinda hurt that he could be dismissed so easily. At least, it hurt until he noticed the game.

“Fuck, is that the score?” Jake exclaimed, twisting to eye the basketball game. “Shit, they’re getting creamed out there. Pounded into mush.”

“Don’t you be dissin’ my boys; they’ll come back strong, just you watch,” the other man growled. Roque, Jake reminded himself, even as the man grunted, “Captain William Roque. Clay’s a fucking pansy with you assholes, so I run you hard and I’m damn proud of it. We clear?”

Right. Alpha, beta, established firmly. If Jake had been a predator, he’d have had the general structure down pat. Except, of course, he wasn’t, but overall he got the picture and he wasn’t going to shake up the system.

“Guys, it’s your job to get him set up, then, get him to his room and settled. I’m gonna make sure the transfer papers went through smoothly.” Clay gave one more look, as if wondering whether he really ought to leave Jake with them, but in the end turned and left. Not that Jake needed a babysitter, but…

This team was certainly different.

Then a perfect three-point shot was interrupted by an elbow, that was _clear_ even if the fucking idiot of a referee didn’t have the balls to call it, and Jake let the thoughts go.

***

Walking out of the kitchen behind Cougar, Jake realized the Mexican male had spoken perhaps ten words, including the four that he had said in the introductions, throughout the rest of the game. “You don’t talk a lot, do you? If you start getting annoyed just kinda throw something at me or kick me – I tend not to know when to stop running my mouth.”

“You can say that again,” Roque growled behind him, and Jake fought not to jump or flinch away. He still wasn’t sure how far he could push Roque and he didn’t really want to find out the hard way, so instead he ignored the words that just _begged_ for a comeback and trailed behind Cougar down the hallway to the staircase, passing a few doors that Jake assumed either led to the garage or a closet or pantry or something else you’d find on the lower floor. All the bedrooms ought to be upstairs, maybe a bathroom and closet, with everything else downstairs. And the bedrooms had to be tiny. In fact –

“We share bedrooms? Am I sharing, or am I taking – I dunno, the couch? Or the floor of someone’s room?”

Cougar’s face remained impassive (Jake got the feeling that he annoyed the sniper to death, which wasn’t a healthy outcome, frankly, and maybe he should shut up and not annoy the man who could kill him from afar) but Roque snorted. “Have fun with him, Cougar,” he grunted.

Again, Cougar didn’t make a sound. Jake did his best to bite down on his tongue. When there was silence, he filled it up – it was just what he did. Cougar didn’t seem appreciative of it.

The hallway continued to be narrow even at the top of the stairs, and there were four doors. One was open – a bathroom, Jake saw as he passed it on his right – and the others were closed. Cougar led him down to the last door on the left. The room wasn’t miniscule, but definitely not much more room than two chests of drawers and two cots. There was a desk, and bunches of guns laid out everywhere on the open spaces. The second bunk, though, was meticulously clean and empty.

“So who used to be there? Didn’t you have a tech before? What happened to him?” Jake asked as he moved to the empty bed and dropped his duffel on the floor and kicking it under the bed. “You’re a team, right? How long’ve you been together? Or, I guess, have you been with them always? Or are you a recent transfer, too?”

Cougar didn’t answer – Jake was beginning not to expect answers, as compared to his old team that attempted to answer every question until they got pissed off and just shouted at him to shut up. Instead, Cougar picked up the few guns that had been sitting on the chest of drawers nearest the second bed – now Jake’s bed. Moving to the other bed, he sat down and began stripping down a gun competently.

And now, in a small room with just Cougar sitting across from him, Jake was recognizing a small (large) problem.

To be quite fair, it had never been a problem before. Oh, Jake had had small flashes, but he’d always been able to overlook it. Even now, it _shouldn’t_ be a problem. Why would he suddenly have this – this _problem_ what with his animal and his temperament and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?

But he was definitely noticing Cougar in a more-than-friendly-brotherly-way. At the same time his horse was noticing Cougar in a oh-shit-this-is-my-natural-predator-way.

Swallowing, he fought back the very strange and, frankly, inexplicably contrasting feelings. Cougar, being a Procedural Soldier, could most likely scent arousal, but if Jake let his animal have a bit more free run with his emotions fear should be the dominant scent, not his human body’s attraction to Cougar.

_Shit. What the hell? And why the hell is Clay sticking me with the predator? This is just asking for trouble. I mean, come on, not even Davis stuck me in the same tent as Cooper, and Davis was a motherfucking psycho –_

“Jensen?”

Jake had been opening up his backpack and he schooled himself from acting like a scared horse – _I am not going to jump like a five year old girl, I am not going to SHRIEK like a five year old girl_ – before turning to see Pooch standing in the doorway.

“Yeah? Porteous – Pooch, right?” Jake corrected himself midway.

“Wanna go to the mess hall? It’s close enough to dinner, and we’ll miss the rush. I’m willing to bet Roque’s not about to sit down and discuss the unit with you, after all.” The critique was offered with a slight smile, an inviting grin that softened the words.

Thankful for someone to talk to – Jake was beginning to miss Anderson, even if Anderson was Cooper’s fan-boy, since Anderson was willing to talk with him endlessly and it had only made sense for them to bunk together – Jake nodded quickly, closing back up the backpack and following Pooch out the room.

“My room’s across the hall, with Roque – Clay’s room is down the hall, on the right – bathroom’s on the left, as you can see – got any questions? Roque’s not easy to talk to, and Cougar… well, he never had been a big talker, and then he’s had a hard mission recently, so we’ve gotten better at reading him. It helps that he’s a Procedural – means he’s trained to speak through body language, and Clay’s trained to interpret from body language, so that’s a plus.”

“I can smell food, though –” Jake ventured.

Pooch nodded, motioning to the kitchen. “We can hang around, if you want, instead. Cougar makes a mean home-cooked meal. He’s the only one that actually cooks – the rest of us kinda play at it with sandwiches. I can make, like, two different soups. Do you cook?”

“Naw – I could burn water. I have burnt water,” Jake admitted freely. “But we can stick around – do you guys normally eat together here?”

Shaking his head, Pooch moved to the table and blinked at it a moment before letting out a sigh. “Well, we’ll need to find an extra chair somewhere, but go ahead and take a seat. We don’t normally eat dinner here, or really any meal, but if Cougar’s in the mood – normally because he’s got a hankering for some type of food, or he wanted to try out something – we try to at least leave room to eat some.” Pooch took one of the chairs and leaned back with a sigh. “So. You have anything you need explained?”

Jake had a lot of questions, but he wasn’t about to start asking. It was obvious that Pooch was the guy Clay had designated to ‘break the new guy in,’ just as Roque was the guy Clay had designated to ‘scare the shit out of the new guy,’ and Cougar was supposed to be ‘babysitter and judge of the new guy,’ and Jake wasn’t about to ask some of his more probing questions when they were just going to get back to Clay sooner or later. But there were a few he could ask that, okay, yeah, he could figure out on his own, but why not see what the team themselves said, not the official report? After all, official reports _were_ so often wrong…

“What happened to your tech from before?” he asked. “I see the game systems and everything – I can’t picture Captain Roque or Colonel Clay fooling around with the controllers.”

Pooch laughed. “You’d be surprised with Clay, actually, but yeah, Roque’s been after us to throw them away. They came with our last tech – and the techie wasn’t ours, he was on loan from another team for a few months. He left them because he took the time to buy a second set while he was here.”

Jake thought back over the front room, where the controllers had been dumped on the table and bunches of DVDs and games were in piles by the television. “But, the front room?” he pointed out.

Pooch smiled sheepishly. “Okay, so maybe I liked them and asked Williams to leave it. But hey, some of those games are badass, you know? And Jolene won’t let me bring that stuff into her house.”

“Williams? Your tech?” Jake clarified, relaxing into the seat.

“Well, again – not ours. But yeah, he was with us. Not that bad of a guy, though not quite cut out for the missions we go on. We really do need a permanent tech; practically nine out of ten missions require us to get into computer mainframes and rip off data, and I might be good with mechanics but tech’s a bit beyond me. Clay can barely operate a toaster, and Roque doesn’t even bother. Cougar’s smart, but he’s not trained to slip through security systems electronically and beyond that, he’s our long-range support. Having a tech assigned with our unit is getting to be less an option and more a desperate need.”

Jake nodded a little – he could understand that. Anything else, he figured he could research on his own. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t hack the files if they were hidden, or slip into mainframes that he really shouldn’t. Cocking his head, he decided to ask the most pressing question at the moment. “I get that Cougar might have the only open bed, but is it really smart to stick the prey with the predator?”

And yeah, okay, his voice was bitter because he was more than a little tired of being _referred_ to as prey, but it was true, and he _was_ a horse, and Cougar _was_ a cougar, and he needed to be safe just as much as he needed a good unit.

Pooch paused, obviously hearing the frustration and anger, and took the time to think over his answer carefully. Finally, he hitched one shoulder and sighed. “Well, I guess you could ask to bunk with me, but Roque refuses to bunk with Cougar – I think it’s because Roque has been asked, quite often, to volunteer to be thrown into the lottery for the injection and he refused. Roque would be an extremely alpha animal, and there’s enough tension between Cougar and Roque without also sticking them together in the same room. And I’m not quite sure you’d want to be with Roque… he’s more an acquired taste, really, and Roque’s pretty particular. Cougar’s normally easygoing with everyone, and to be quite frank he’s got a lot of experience dealing with techs and your eccentricities. I get pissy if you keep me up to all hours because you’re tapping on your laptop or wandering in and out of the room – you can ask Williams about that. And if you’re worried about Cougar’s ability to control himself, he really _is_ the most controlled Procedural Soldier you could hope to meet. He’s never really needed the training beyond how to initiate the transformation, and he’s never, oh, I dunno, lost control and hunted down a deer or something.”

The front door opened, and there was a rumble of voices that Jake could pick out as Clay’s and Roque’s, murmuring about the new mission. Pooch let out a sigh and stood up.

“You also have to ask, Jensen – do you _see_ yourself as the prey?”

And even though Jake had been fighting against that stereotype ever since he’d become a horse, even though Jake had been trying to accept what he had been turned to and what had happened, Pooch’s words struck a chord deep inside.

 _Did_ he see himself as merely prey for these predators to hunt down?

_You’re a fucking special operations soldier, Jake Jensen, and by god you’re gonna fucking ACT like it._

Maybe this unit was one he could actually fit in with.

***

“Alright, let’s see your form.”

Jake blinked at the sudden command – he’d retreated to his room as it had become more obvious that, yeah, he was a part of the team, but no one was quite comfortable with him yet – and had his laptop balanced on his knees as he absently chased some sour cream that had fallen out of his burrito around his plate with a finger. Clay was standing in the doorway, and it was late afternoon, the last rays of sunlight slanting in past the curtains. “Sir?”

“I wanna see what I have to work with. I rarely use Cougar’s form – I don’t think I’m gonna use yours all that much, either – but I’d rather know what you look like so I know which horse to yell at if you slip into some stable or something.”

This had to be both the strangest reason and strangest command Jake had heard in his whole time in the army, but commanding officer was commanding officer, and so he got up readily enough, licking his finger clean and carrying his plate out with him. “Where’d the others go?” he asked when they got down the stairs and Jake realized the kitchen was deserted.

“Last night on base; they went down to Morgan’s.”

Jake knew the bar catered almost strictly to the military crowd – there were other bars and clubs in the city surrounding the base, but Morgan’s regulars (males and females, though males more) were military only, and the women who were looking for fun with them. Not that he’d expected to be invited to a ‘boy’s night’ with his new team, but still…

 _You’re expecting too much, too soon, and you know alcohol just loosens your tongue more, so shut the fuck up and stop whining,_ he told himself sternly as he put the plate in the sink, ran water over it briefly, and then followed Clay out of the house and out towards the training grounds.

With the onset of Procedural Soldiers, it became clear that a separate training ground would be needed just for them. Part of the reason was because you didn’t want twitchy recruits with a gun nearby large predators, and the other part was because you didn’t want twitchy large predators nearby unpredictable humans. In any case, this late in the day there weren’t many on the PS training grounds, and the few that were there were lounging more than anything. They glanced over, eyes cursory, and then recognition flared in their faces.

Jake slowed his walking, muscles bunching as their attention centered on him, but Clay let out a soft grunt. “Ignore them, Jensen. Do you need anything specific to transform?”

Jake forced his worry away and instead moved a bit away from Clay, towards the changing rooms. “Not really, sir,” he said more confidently than he felt. True, the general had gotten him a trainer to run him through the basics all other Procedural Soldiers had been given, but the trainer had made it clear that Jake was wasting his time as the horse was an outdated military animal and beyond that, the training was created for predators and developed around the mindset of predators, which didn’t apply to Jake at all. Still, he could transfer on command, and it was a fairly quick and smooth transformation as compared to others he knew about.

The PS training ground was characterized by an obstacle course that looked almost identical to the normal training ground as well as a wider area and a low building that housed showers and allowed the men to strip in relative privacy and come out with nothing more than a towel so they could change without tearing clothes with every transformation. Jake moved to them as well, aware out of the corner of his eye of the three other Procedurals nearby. They started to move towards the shower area as Jake crossed the threshold and Jake closed his eyes in frustration. It wouldn’t do to get into a fight in front of his commanding officer, but predators respected the offensive, not the defensive. Perhaps he could strip quick enough that it wouldn’t matter…

Then, from outside the door, there came a rough growl. “You boys have somewhere to be?”

There was a pause, and Jake shucked his pants and briefs and stuffed the clothes and shoes into a locker. “Sir, we were just about to shower up and change, if you don’t mind.”

Clay’s voice again, pointed. “You look pretty fresh to me, but if you say so. I want space to train, so you better give us that space. You hear me?”

“Sir, yes sir!”

Jake tied the towel even as the three men filed into the room, their eyes instantly swiveling to pick Jake out in the dim room. Jake smirked – never show your fear wasn’t just a good rule of thumb, it was what your life depended on with predators – and sauntered past. “Ladies,” he said genially.

With a growl, one of them stepped into his way, nostrils flaring. Tall black guy, but not much taller than Jake himself. They were, in fact, about the same size human-body-wise, though Jake was willing to bet this was a wolf standing in front of him and not someone he really had to be overly worried about. Wolves respected hierarchy, after all. If this had been a feline, or a bear, he’d be a bit more worried, because cats liked to be contrary on principle and bears had no respect for anyone.

“Problem?” Jake asked coolly, tilting his head to consider the other man. The other two were content to wait – most likely this one had established his dominance over them, and they ceded to his lead. At least Jake didn’t have to worry about all three of them ganging up on him.

Small comfort.

“You smell delicious,” the wolf growled.

Jake snorted. “And you smell horrible, but you don’t see me going around advertising your defects, do you? If you’d excuse me, my commanding officer’s a demanding sonuvabitch and it’s not like I actually want to play in the showers with you three.”

Another, darker, growl rumbled through the man’s chest, but he glanced at the door a moment before sneering. Jake could see the initial changes already in his body – the overly-focused eyes and the lengthening teeth – as the man snarled, “Run, prey, and hide behind the legs of your commanding officer. Even the losers will eventually get sick of you and then you’ll have no one.”

“Well, on that cheery thought,” Jake muttered sarcastically as he pushed past the man and came into the light, dirt beneath his feet and getting between his toes. Sighing, he scratched at his abdomen and held onto the towel with his free hand. “Sir?”

Clay was leaning against the wall, and had pushed off when Jake had come out. Now, he led Jake to the open area and motioned. “I wanna see what you can do in your form, your height, what you’ve trained for.”

“Sir, I haven’t been trained much beyond learning to keep myself from transforming when stressed. I know the training for the predators is a lot more focused –”

Clay narrowed his eyes at Jake. “Are you giving me excuses, soldier?”

Frustration flashed through Jake’s body like a flash of lightning and he fought to keep his body language and emotions under control. “Sir, no sir.”

“Then show me what you can do.”

Tough love, huh? Teaching him to overcome his limitations by forcing him to be angry? Sure, Jake could recognize the psychological tactics but that didn’t change the fact that they pissed him the fuck off and if he could he’d simply throw the nearest object at Clay and have done with it. Every single time he’d transformed for his commanding officers – for the one or two who actually asked, as most had looked at his file, seen _horse_ , and labeled it as useless off the bat – they’d put him through the exercises that the predators had to go through, and he wasn’t ever going to be able to pounce or get small enough to slink through enemy lines. Hell, it wasn’t even as if he could fit through a _door_.

Teeth gritted, he rubbed at his nose and took off his glasses. For a long moment, he considered going back into the changing room and placing his glasses in the locker, but he didn’t _really_ want to go past all of them and the general had made it clear that, though he might like Jake, that wasn’t going to keep him from booting Jake out on his ass if he screwed up with another team. Taking a deep breath and trying to control the anger and bitterness, he turned to Clay and held out the glasses. “Would you hold onto these for me, sir?”

Clay took them solemnly, and with his horse dancing so close to the surface Jake could catch _worrySADNESSdeterminationcare_ in Clay’s scent. Deciding that he’d rather not go about obviously sniffing his superior – commanding officers took offense to that, most of the time – he took a few hasty steps back and took a deep breath in.

That first time he’d transformed, he’d been watching Doyle transform in front of him, sure that Doyle was going to rip him apart because Doyle was a fourth wave Procedural and Jake was a fifth and that meant Doyle was still in training and could lose control. He’d reached for an advantage, any advantage, and found one when he stretched his mind and found in the back of it a curiously intelligent and, yes, affable and playful, soul hiding in the back.

Now, it was easier to find that other soul because Horse was woven into his brain now, changing his programming, adding and subtracting from _Jake_ so that they were more alike. The injection was specifically designed to slide through the mind, to make the two creatures inhabiting the one body open and okay with one another. Men that fought the change – and there were those who did not like their animal, or did not like the loss of control that came with their animal – almost always went insane, if not suicidal. Jake was not one to give up that way, though, and it was second nature for him to roll with the punches, especially after how he’d grown up.

Still, there was only so many times you could convince yourself to stand up before you started thinking it was easier to just lie down and ignore everything.

That thought slipped through his mind and with an angry shudder, he tapped at the other soul in his thoughts. Horse was ecstatic, happy to let out because it was very confining in Jake’s mind, and there was a seamless transition, a smooth-as-silk switch as Jake retreated to the back and Horse to the front and then

_Awake. Alive. Scent of gunmetalpowderMENangerstrength and Horse liked those scents, because Other knew those scents meant safety._

“Jensen.”

_Horse turned to look at the strange man before him and breathed in, nostrils flaring, taking in the scent of authoritystrengthprotectionHERDMASTER and bobbed his head, because Other told Horse that was what he was supposed to do when he heard that command._

“Alright, let’s see what you can do. Run through your paces, and then the part of the course you can do.”

_Horse twitched his head towards the obstacle course. Those were not meant for large animals like himself. Even blackfurbrownfurBEAR couldn’t go through the course correctly. There were other options, and Horse considered them even as Other repeated the command for running._

_Running was easy. Running was what Horse was meant to do, what Horse loved to do, and Horse tossed his head as he began to walk around HERDMASTER, widening the circle to take in all the area. More menpredatorsDANGERrunrunrun came out of a small box, but Other held Horse still, and Horse was no yearling to balk at danger. He ran into it, because Other was strong and Horse was strong and Other would not put him in situations where Horse could not win. Horse trusted Other, and Other… well, Other might not like Horse all that much, but Other could live with Horse, and Horse would prove to Other that they were good together._

_Horse was good for Other, like Other was good for Horse._

_So Horse lengthened his stride to a trot, ignoring even when the menpredatorpower began changing into greyfursharpteethWOLF and smallspotstemperLYNX and blackbrownteethDOG. Trot slid easily into canter, and the wind was against Horse’s mane and he snorted, pride and intelligence and even playfulness began to creep into his movements. Canter moved to gallop, and it was with ease Horse moved across the ground and circled HERDMASTER._

“Alright, what part of the obstacle course can you do?”

_Horse could jump, and run. Could kick and fight, too, he knew he could, but Other had never put him where he had to fight and Horse liked that, because Horse didn’t like fighting all that much. Still, Horse had protected them from blackfurpowerangerDANGERgrizzlybear and so Horse knew how. The others, WOLF and LYNX and DOG were on the course, and Horse didn’t much like going near them but he didn’t show that, even if his scent changed. WOLF panted, tongue out, watching Horse, and Horse kept one eye on WOLF because Other said the LYNX and DOG wouldn’t attack without WOLF attacking first, and Horse trusted Other._

_Horse moved to the running part of the obstacle course, showing that he could jump high, that he could turn fast, that he could kick and rear. He could also pick his way carefully across the ground, and recognize and carry items if Horse had to, though they didn’t taste all that great. There wasn’t much more, though, that Horse could do, and so he didn’t know what more to do. Other had no help for him, either, and there was anger – such anger, and fury, and frustration – in Other’s soul. Horse might not be able to do much, but Horse was good for other things, and with a soft sigh Horse flicked his tail and walked away from WOLF, not even giving WOLF a look because WOLF was so much lesser than Horse it didn’t bear repeating or explanation._

“Okay, Jensen. How about how you interact with your team?”

_Horse didn’t know what that meant, and Other didn’t know what it meant, either. His ears flicked forwards, and Horse snorted questioningly. His body language was of course different from predator body language, but not all that much, and confusion was same. HERDMASTER correctly read the confusion, and made a motion with his hand that Horse watched with interest._

“Can other men ride on you? Can you carry heavy loads?”

_Well, no one had ever asked Horse OR Other about pulling or carrying loads, or about riding. Other thought about it for a split second before shrugging to Horse, which Horse took to mean it was alright. So Horse walked up to HERDMASTER and presented his side, craning his head around to look at HERDMASTER more closely. HERDMASTER gripped Horse’s mane, and that stung a little, but it was alright and Horse moved his head to better help HERDMASTER clamber up on Horse’s back. Once Horse was sure that HERDMASTER had a good grip in his mane – Other had to tell him when, but Horse was a quick learner – Horse began to trot, running through the paces once more._

_And then HERDMASTER leaned close to his ear and whispered,_ “Run.” __

_And Horse had permission to run and HERDMASTER wanted him to run and even Other really wanted it, even if he wasn’t sure he should want it, so Horse RAN._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I haven't had time to reply to comments, especially from nagasvoice. :( BUT. I am dedicating this chapter to nagasvoice, because without their comments, this chapter and the ones after it would have been VASTLY different (i.e., really bad horse assumptions instead of marginally more informed horse-writing). THANK YOU!
> 
> AND WHOA. JUST - WHOA. Thank you all for reading and liking my work! I do a little fangirl squee when I get a notification in my inbox because it means you guys are really enjoying this story, as much as I enjoy writing it!
> 
> I'm debating updating biweekly, if I can start bringing up my word count/writing. I really don't want to over-post and then make you wait until I've written more, but in mid-July I'm going to be going offline for about a month for personal reasons, and I want to get as much of this story out before then. A firm decision will be made by next posting - if I do change the posting schedule, it'll be every Monday and Thursday, instead of just Thursday.
> 
> Current word count stands at 64k+ words. Getting closer to meeting my goal each week!

When Clay finally got off Jensen’s back, the grey horse was breathing hard, but the wildness and frustration that had been in those intelligent black eyes was gone. Not that Clay in any way thought Jensen had worked out his energy – from all accounts, Jensen was better than the Energizer bunny – but Jensen was relatively calmer.

Relatively.

He still danced back and forth. His ears constantly moved to all noises, and he had the tendency to be distracted by actions going on around him. But he was focused when he needed to be, and Clay had gone through a bunch of exercises to test Jensen’s stamina.

Which, oddly enough, no one had ever thought to do before. Why, Clay had no clue – okay, he knew that quite a few of the scientists resented the ‘failure’ they saw in Jensen’s horse, and most commanding officers were looking for fighting animals so they weren’t thinking beyond what the scientists had promised, but that was no reason to ignore what Jensen _could_ do – Jensen could easily carry injured members, or be equipped with saddlebags and sent into the jungle with sensitive information, or even lie in ambush as a nonthreatening animal. After all, how many bad guys were really going to look at a cougar padding alongside the road and dismiss it as common? A horse had definite advantages, even if, apparently, no one wanted to acknowledge them. Least of all Jensen himself.

And that worried Clay the most. Jensen needed to accept his animal fully, be confident as a horse just as much as he was a man, otherwise Jensen wasn’t going to last long. Cougar was as good as he was _because_ the animal part of him was exactly like the human part, only more direct about what he wanted. Jensen suppressing that part of him and the urges that made up that part of him would only harm himself irrevocably.

He watched as Jensen trotted carelessly over to the towel – and Clay approved of how easily it was for Jensen to dismiss the wolf that watched his every move, because that was a testament to how much Jensen was in control and humanly aware of his surroundings – and began to change. Clay still couldn’t get over his marvel about how the human body seemingly blended into the animal, and vice versa. For the ones who were still new at the change, it was like every horror story: the sound of bones cracking, of writhing on the ground, of bones lengthening and elongating and muscle groups bunching and thinning grotesquely. But the Procedurals that had gotten themselves under control, had gotten used to the change? It was like some fucking science fiction transformation, all smooth motions and controlled twists until the man was pushing off of the ground. The spotted grey and lighter grey coat melted into golden skin and the black mane lightened to blond spikes, the tail disappearing completely. Unconcerned, Jensen stood up, grabbing the towel as he did so and expertly – and quickly – wrapping it around his lower body. Clay could see scars and small marks on the otherwise almost baby-smooth skin. Must be teased a lot, have some kind of complex. Techs weren’t treated like ‘real soldiers;’ they were still seen as teenage boys playing with computer games, kids that the team had to babysit to keep out of trouble. It made Jensen’s level of fitness interesting. Then again, Jensen’s file did mention he had started off as a basic soldier, and was moved into the tech program afterwards.

“Must be hungry,” Clay commented, keeping his thought process to himself. “Get dressed and we’ll head back. I don’t think the boys are back yet, so you can shower if you’ve got any aches.” Cougar had taken a few minutes to adjust to the change from animal to human in the beginning and was hungrier than a bear from the energy use, and there was a certain stiffness in Jensen’s walk that suggested that he was aching in joints and muscles.

“Yessir,” Jensen responded automatically, moving towards the showers and lockers. Clay waited outside again, watching the three men running the course.

He could see why Jensen was uncertain and not quite completely comfortable around him and his team. If no one had ever even tried to play up the strengths of his animal and instead expected a huge animal to do what smaller animals could, or expected a level of ferocity in behavior that was present in other predator animals, then Jensen wouldn’t think to move in that way.

Seeing Jensen in horse form made him question other things, too. One of Clay’s ex-wives (he only had _two_ , Rachel had left him at the altar and didn’t _count_ , Roque) had owned a horse ranch and he could remember a time or two he’d watch her run a horse through its paces, check its hooves, brush its coat. Predators rarely needed extra care, because they only ever transformed in situations of dire need or to practice, and the pads of their feet – while needed some calluses built up – were generally fine. Hooves, Clay could remember, had inherent problems and who hadn’t seen all those movies where one broken leg equaled a humane killing of a horse? He’d have to work that into training with Jensen somehow, look up some type of techniques for taking care of horse’s hooves…

Jensen came out, rubbing the back of his neck. For a geek, he was certainly tall. Not stereotypical in any way, was Corporal Jacob Jensen. Clay had to tilt his head up to meet those wary blue eyes.

“Everything alright, soldier?”

“Yessir,” Jensen said automatically, and Clay could’ve kicked himself for a stupid question like that.

The walk back to the house was pretty silent, and when they got in Clay motioned to the game systems. “I think Williams got Pooch addicted to them, and even Cougar will pick up a controller every once in a while, but you can take them over if you want. But you gotta be hungry – wanna eat first, or soak in a less public shower than the ones at the training ground?”

Jensen hesitated, indecision flickering. Finally, he motioned towards the stairs. “I think I’ll soak. Sir. Being a horse isn’t exactly difficult, but it’s hell on the body. I still don’t understand the science of how a 180 pound human can turn into an almost thousand pound horse…”

Clay’s mouth twitched into a smirk. “I don’t understand it, either, but then again, I don’t understand how the Europeans actually discovered and implemented a werewolf formula in their soldiers. I’m just glad we got a formula that can give us a fighting chance against the black market shit that’s being snatched up by all the groups we’re going up against.”

“Still gotta perfect it, though,” Jensen muttered as he moved towards the stairs.

“Jensen.”

Jensen turned, glasses hiding his eyes in the dimming evening light, the hallway seemingly much smaller with his tall body standing in the middle of it. “Yessir?”

“I know what the purpose of the formula is. My soldier was part of the second wave and there’s not a day I’m thankful that he’d been a part of the trial when he’d been captured by terrorists or cornered by enemy soldiers in his nest. The formula may have been created with only one purpose in mind, and I don’t know what the scientists and your previous commanding officers have been telling you, but from what I understand you turn into the animal that best represents you, am I right?”

“Yessir.” Voice wary, a hint of defiance in the voice, of arrogance.

“That means that, had you been anything else, you wouldn’t have been as good at it. You made it this far as a soldier, and your temperament’s not been a problem so far unless you made it one on purpose, so having that temperament manifest shouldn’t be a problem, either – unless you’re gonna make it one ‘cause you’re not acting smart. We clear?”

Jensen hesitated, as if not sure what Clay was saying, but it looked like it might be getting through with him. “Clear, sir.”

“Alright, then. I’ll get something together. You got any direct allergies?” None had been listed in Jensen’s file, but always better to double-check, ask directly.

Jensen had started up the stairs and he stopped to turn back around. “No, no allergies, sir, but…” He trailed off, and Clay waited a moment.

“But?” Clay finally prompted.

Clay thought he could catch a faint blush behind the short blond stubble. “I, ah, can’t eat meat all that – all that well, anymore. At least – not straight meat.” Jensen frowned thoughtfully. “Mystery meat still works okay, don’t ask me why.”

Clay blinked, then realized that a vegetarian animal wouldn’t be happy with a carnivorous human at all. Now that he thought about it, Cougar didn’t touch vegetables that much anymore…

Jensen obviously misinterpreted his silence, as he launched into an explanation. “Not that I’m picky, sir, and I’ll eat whatever, it’s just it’s easier for me not to, but you don’t have to worry about it. It’s nothing at all –”

“Jensen,” Clay interrupted.

“Yessir?” Jensen stopped, and there was anger and even resentment in his voice.

Clay wasn’t quite sure how to handle this, but he gave it a shot. “That’s fine. It doesn’t affect your performance any, but I think the food Cougar left over has meat cooked in it. You’ll have to scrounge for something else.”

“That’s not a problem, sir,” Jensen replied, a bit stiffly.

Jensen would take a lot of handling. For the first time, Clay could see why Jensen was bounced around. If he was this high maintenance, no commander would want to cater to him when they had other men, other priorities.

_Three months. I promised three months._

It didn’t look like they’d be easy.

***

Clay was relaxing on the couch with a beer when Roque and Pooch stumbled in. Well, Pooch stumbled in since he was supporting Roque – Roque was more ‘dragged’ in than anything.

“Cougar out with someone?” Clay asked wryly.

Pooch huffed a sigh. Cougar was notorious for making his way through copious numbers of girls time after time. Something about the strong, silent mystique he built up – it attracted women like flies to honey. It helped that he looked young, younger than he was. Roque complained about the “Cougar-effect” that had all the women flocking to the young Mexican with the rakish smile and that hat that was a veritable chick magnet. Pooch didn’t care, of course – he had Jolene – and Clay never went for the sane girls anyway (so his team claimed, and Clay had to admit that he had a higher average amount than normal of women who both had sex with him and tried to kill him), but Roque was always more than a little annoyed when Cougar didn’t find a pretty thing and disappear within a half hour. He ended up drinking more, and coming back alone while Cougar stayed and plied his feminine admirers solo.

“Well, let’s dump him upstairs,” Clay grunted, getting off the couch and grabbing Roque’s other arm and helping Pooch maneuver Roque up the stairs and into the room. Not that Clay was going to do anything more than drop him onto the cot – it was Pooch who pulled off Roque’s boots and placed a trashcan by the cot. Out of all of them, Pooch was the sanest, and most likely to be ‘den mother’ than Roque or Clay.

Which was why, when they moved downstairs and Pooch let out a sigh and sank into the armchair, Clay asked diffidently, “So, whaddaya think of the new guy?”

“Kid. New _kid_.” Pooch snorted, shook his head before hitching one shoulder. “He’s… I dunno, he’s got heart. Fire. And he’s not about to step back ‘cause someone gets in his face. Which is odd, for his animal – horse, you said, right?”

Clay nodded in response to Pooch’s question, and Pooch rubbed a hand across his face. “Guess that’s why he got picked for the injection,” Pooch continued. “I took him aside, like you asked, gave him the option to ask me questions. He asked about the game systems.”

“I gather he’s not been handled well,” Clay ventured, but didn’t say more than that. Pooch was a pretty good judge of character. Cougar was the best, but Cougar wasn’t here, and Cougar either reserved his judgment on a new addition for months or acclimated to the new presence in days depending on his mood, especially since his injection. Clay would wait for Pooch’s assessment.

Pooch scratched the back of his neck. “He’s not your typical tech,” he began, voice slow. “He’s different. Got a mouth on him that doesn’t seem filtered at all.” Tapping fingers against the side of the chair, he finally shrugged. “Could be he just has had a run of bad luck – could be he’s more trouble than he’s worth – and could be that this one just ain’t cut out for this shit.”

“What’s your money on?”

Pooch laughed. “Like I could tell you? Fuck, Clay – I’ve talked to the guy for a grand total of, what, five minutes when he first walked in, and then five minutes after Cougar showed him his bunk? How the hell should I know? Can you transfer him back?”

Clay shook his head. “Three months’ probation period, and then I get to drop him if I want.”

“Then I suggest waiting out the three months,” Pooch pointed out logically.

With a grunt, Clay picked up his beer and took a sip. Annoying as fuck, but true enough. Not much more he could do one way or the other. “He’s probably coming along on our next mission.”

“When do we ship out?” Pooch asked.

“Sixteen hundred tomorrow.”

Pooch considered a moment. “Was leaving him here really an option, though? On base, alone, without a team? There are rules against doing that with Procedurals – the formula’s supposed to hardwire pack-mentality, isn’t it, even with bears?”

“Yeah…” Clay watched the condensation drip down the side of his bottle. “Not sure how well that works on a horse. Still. Herd, I guess…”

“Will we need a tech for this job?”

Clay huffed out a short laugh. “Would make it a damn sight easier, I’ll tell you that.”

“Then, he’s going.” Pooch leaned back as if it was final, closing his eyes and resting his head against the back of the chair. “Fucking Roque’s like a fucking mountain. Next time, you be his wingman. I hate going to bars without Jolene anyway.”

Clay chuckled as he stood up. “Get some sleep, soldier, and be up and ready by eight hundred.”

“Yessir, Colonel.”

***

Clay blinked open his eyes. Why was he awake? It was fucking two in the morning and—

Another creaking noise, and a faint whistling sound. Not Cougar coming back in – Cougar didn’t make noise, unless he’d finished off an entire bottle of tequila, but finishing off an entire bottle of tequila also meant he was coming home with his teammates, not out catting around – so someone else. Roque would wake up with the mother of all hangovers (again) and Pooch could sleep through an explosion (and had before).

New guy.

Clay groaned under his breath and sat up. His room was bigger than the others, full of a bit more stuff, though pretty Spartan all around. After all, the army life did not lend to an accumulation of items and luxuries. But his space was his, by virtue of his rank (not like he was going to advance any higher, not with his tendency to go outside the lines whenever he fucking felt like it), and so he didn’t have to worry about bothering anyone as he got to his feet, glowering at the clock, and opened the door.

Jensen was walking down the hallway in nothing but a pair of smiley boxers and socks, softly whistling under his breath, a plate of bread balanced on the keyboard of his laptop that was in his hands, a peanut butter jar balanced on his head (wouldn’t the spikes make it difficult to stay upright?), and a bread knife balanced on the bridge of his nose. The bright screen reflected off of Jensen’s glasses as he moved into a few bars of Queen’s _Don’t Stop Me Now._

Clay decided not to ask. He closed his door quietly and moved back to his bed and very determinedly put the image out of his thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDITED: 7/14/12. Apparently I can't be bothered to stick to my own headcanon, let alone canon. Jensen is supposed to have blue eyes; now he does. =D


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I will say I met my goal! 70k+ words, guys, and if I can write 5k more words by Thursday there'll be another update! I'm trying to speed up the updates because about mid-second week, end of the second week of July, I'll be offline for about a month for personal reasons.
> 
> ALSO. I know a bit more about cats than I do horses, and I understand that chocolate is not good for cats. Since this isn't a major issue overall, and the explanation comes MUCH much later (when Jensen's mourning the fact that he can't eat meat but Cougar can eat chocolate) and is really only a snippet - I will say that if Cougar eats chocolate and it's still in his digestive system when he transforms, he'll be throwing up as a cougar and woozy and ill. Otherwise, if it goes through his system before he transforms, he's fine.

Cougar wasn’t quite sure what to make of their newest member. He’d come in last night at three thirty in the morning and the new guy – Jensen – was up, sitting cross-legged on his bunk mumbling to himself through a mouthful of peanut butter and tapping on his laptop. When Cougar had stepped into the room, Jensen had frozen, and so Cougar had determinedly ignored him to just toe off his boots, take off his hat and place it on the dresser by the head of his bed, and dump his shirt onto the floor.

Cougar was used to having others give him looks. He’d learned to shrug off the fear he could smell whenever he walked into a room, learned to trust that his team would never have that scent on them. So walking into a room and smelling nothing but tightly controlled fear?

Well, it wasn’t relaxing.

Though there wasn’t much more Cougar could do about it besides ignore it. Jensen wasn’t used to him, and with his other form might never get used to him. And it didn’t help that Cougar’s animal scented Jensen and went _preyfoodwantHUNTprey_ at the same time it scented Jensen and went _grouppackCOMPANION_. It took a bit to keep himself from just walking up to Jensen and breathing in deep that intoxicating scent of _food_.

But Cougar prided himself on his ability to keep himself in check. As he had kept himself in check time after time after time, with more provocation than some tech could ever throw at him. After all, he’d survived Afghanistan – there was no way some techie would ever measure up to that level of hell. He’d earned his place before Roque and Clay (Pooch he had never needed to prove himself to, but that was because Pooch was just that kind of guy) and he wasn’t going to jeopardize that because some smooth-talking idiot was clicking on his keyboard and making it difficult for Cougar to sleep.

Still… what the fuck? Couldn’t the guy have some consideration? After all, Cougar had come back from a very full and long night; sleep was much needed, especially with their next mission later today.

So it was a grumpy Cougar who woke with the sound of movement in his room. Jensen was up, singing to himself (off-key) and for a brief moment Cougar thought it was still dark, still night. But no, that was sunlight coming in through the window, and shit, that had never actually happened before. Well, okay, it had happened _once_ before, but nightmares normally kept Cougar awake. And if they weren’t keeping Cougar awake, they were certainly keeping him from uninterrupted sleep. Yet here he was, no recollection of a nightmare waking him in the middle of the night, and feeling fully rested for once in his life.

Still singing to himself, Jensen wiggled his narrow white ass out the door, and Cougar blinked at it before letting out an annoyed sigh and curling back up on his cot, tugging the blanket up to his chin and feeling very much like a cat as he tucked his knees to his chest and pulled himself into a ball.

It was working, too – he always started out sleeping like this, then straightening as he slept – when Jensen popped back in, smelling of fresh water and natural musk and the hint of ozone that indicated electricity and computers. It was distracting as anything, and Cougar debated opening his eyes and baring his teeth at the guy, just to get him out of the room to let Cougar get some more rest. But there was other movement in the house; the rest of the team (or, at least, two thirds of the other three) were up as well.

Fucking hell.

With a frustrated growl, Cougar pushed himself off the bed. There was a brief cessation in sound from Jensen’s side of the room, but in minutes it was back up again, and then Jensen said cheerily, “Morning, lazybones, saw you come in last night. Got lucky, I’m assuming?”

Cougar was going to stab Jensen with a pen.

“Not a morning person, are you?” Jensen said, still far too loud and bright for Cougar to do anything except bare his teeth in a snarl at him.

Almost immediately, Cougar felt bad for the guy, as Jensen froze and the scent of _horsepreyFEAR_ stung Cougar’s nose. He shouldn’t so obviously call up his animal, not when the guy was just being – well, pretty fucking annoying, actually, but still, he wasn’t doing anything _wrong_.

And then Jensen’s eyes grew hard and the scent of _defianceangerFIGHT_ flooded Cougar’s senses. “Well, then I guess it’s pointless to let you know that there are donuts downstairs. I’ll just go and eat yours, then.”

Not only that, but Jensen turned on his heel – way more difficult than it sounded, giving a predator your vulnerable back, as Cougar knew himself – and sashayed out the door.

_Sashayed_.

Cougar scrubbed at the stubble on his face and did his best not to groan aloud.

***

When Cougar got out of the bathroom, his goatee trimmed (and not quite sure he wanted to keep a goatee when apparently Jensen favored the same type of facial hair structure, but not quite willing to change his style simply because some upstart techie had the gall to have the same style) and a shower waking him the rest of the way up, Pooch was just exiting his room with a duffle. “Oh, hey, Cougs, see you’re up early. Short night?”

Cougar narrowed his eyes at Pooch.

Pooch correctly interpreted the look – all the team could interpret Cougar’s silent communication now, though it had played hell on the team dynamics when it had first become glaringly apparent – and snickered. “Jensen appears to be getting to everyone. Clay’s not sure about him, Roque’s got him running laps ‘cause he was dancing in the kitchen, and here you are, awake earlier than you normally would be and not at all your usual and sunny self.” Hefting the duffle on his shoulder, he followed Cougar down the stairs. “He saved a chocolate donut for you, though.”

Cougar could almost forgive Jensen for that alone. He had to wonder, though – how had the tech known about his sweet tooth?

“Of course, that’s if Roque left it alone,” Pooch mused, dumping his duffle on the floor by the front door (where two other duffle bags were sitting) and dropping onto the couch. Cougar kept half an ear out as Pooch muttered and moved through the game controllers, looking through the empty box. Well, it certainly seemed as if Roque ate it…

With a sigh, he picked up the box and moved to throw it out. Underneath the box, there was a smear of chocolate that looked like—

Was that an arrow?

Brow furrowed, he set the donut box aside and bent down to look at the smeared line that, yes, sort of looked like an arrow. He obligingly looked where the arrow pointed, and stared at the sink.

The counter? Why would anyone…?

Curious, now, he stepped forward and glanced down at the counter. No, nothing on it – not a plate, cup, or bowl. To one side was the oven, the other the sink – an empty sink – so Pooch must have rinsed everything and stuck it in the drainer. Roque never bothered to do the dishes and Clay didn’t even move his dishes over to the sink. Or maybe the new guy, Jensen, had done it. Didn’t change the fact that the sink was empty. And, in any case, there was no reason for an arrow to be pointing towards the counter – or the oven, or the sink – at all.

Maybe he was just reading into it. After all, it _was_ just a chocolate smear.

Grunting, he stepped away from the sink – and his nose caught the faint scent of chocolate.

A soft, frustrated snarl rumbled in his chest – his cougar didn’t like being teased any more than he himself liked it – and he looked around. There were a few cabinets, but they held plates and cups and dry cereal. Certainly nothing in them would smell of chocolate.

There was a microwave _over_ the counter, though.

Opening the microwave, Cougar blinked at two donuts sitting on a napkin, one chocolate and the other chocolate glazed. The icing on the glazed chocolate was smeared a little, and on the back wall of the microwave there was a crude drawing of a sun, and a squiggle underneath it.

Deciding he didn’t really care about childish cave drawings, he took his donuts (because they were _his_ and no one could tell him differently) out of the microwave and used the napkin they had been sitting on to wipe up the smears. Honestly. If Clay hadn’t specifically told Cougar that Jensen was a year older than him, he would have been hard pressed to say Jensen was over twenty years old, let alone twenty-seven.

Pooch had some shooting game on when Cougar came into the front room with his donuts, and raised an eyebrow at the sweets in Cougar’s hands. “Huh. I guess Roque left ‘em alone, then.”

Cougar quirked his mouth into a smile as he sat down, absently munching through them as he watched, not at all sure what Pooch was doing, the action on the screen.

He had finished his donuts and was wiping his hands clean when the front door flew open and Jensen came whirling in, humming to himself and bopping his head around. He looked ridiculous – a geek Adonis, muscled as any special forces soldier with a bright rainbow arching over a unicorn on his sweat-soaked t-shirt. “Well, hey there, Poochman, whatcha up to – oh, hey Cougar! Guess you found them, huh? And what did I tell you?”

Cougar raised an eyebrow, eyes curious.

Jensen, perhaps by virtue of being a fellow Procedural, seemed to get that Cougar was confused. “You know, the message I left you? In the microwave?”

Cougar cocked his head.

With a frustrated sigh, Jensen threw his arms up dramatically. “Man, you’re all a bunch of uncultured boors. ‘The early bird gets the worm!’ And if you had gotten up early, you would have gotten a worm, but I got the worm for you instead and left it in the microwave. Along with your donuts. And the sun. Because suns are easy to draw.”

Cougar wasn’t quite sure about Jensen’s sanity anymore, and so he just nodded and turned his attention back to the screen.

“I’mma go shower. Again. Roque’s a bit uptight, isn’t he?” And so saying, Jensen waltzed out of the living room and towards the stairs.

_Waltzed_.

As Jensen’s warbling voice echoed from upstairs, Pooch grunted. “Roque’s not gonna be the only one pissed at the kid before long.”

Cougar sympathized.

***

“So, Jensen.”

Cougar paused momentarily in his movements – he was in the small closet, near the bottom of the stairs, that housed the tiny washer and dryer unit Clay had managed to requisition for their house, trying to find at least five pairs of socks that matched – as he realized his room door must be open, or Pooch must’ve just cornered Jensen coming out of the shower.

“Yeah, Poochman?”

Cougar quirked his lips at the odd nickname. At least Pooch didn’t seem to dislike it; or, at least, wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it at the moment. In any case, Pooch asked, “So, how’d you know Cougar likes chocolate?”

“There is a lot of knowledge I have at my disposal, Poochman,” Jensen said in some phony fake wise-elder-type voice. Cougar glared at the inside of the dryer even as Jensen laughed. “Okay, seriously, I could smell chocolate every time I’m near the guy’s bunk. And hey, if I feed the kitty, maybe the kitty won’t eat me. You know? Hey, has anyone ever tried to call him –”

Cougar bared his teeth, even as Pooch interrupted, “Call him kitty or pussy and you’ll figure out why he’s the best damn Procedural soldier on this entire base.”

There was a moment of silence, even though Pooch’s words hadn’t been overly harsh, merely matter-of-fact, and then Jensen resignedly sighed. “Well, damn. And he’s a sniper, too, so I can’t piss him off because he could shoot me out of my shoes without anyone the wiser. And I sleep in the same room with him, apparently, so he could smother me in my sleep and claim I must’ve suffocated from an overdose of peanut butter or something.”

“Peanut butter?” Pooch asked curiously, even as Cougar’s mind flashed back to last night and the scent of peanut butter and the bread knife smeared with gooeyness in one of Jensen’s hands.

“Anywho, I’mma get packed up. We leave in a few hours, right? Where’s the colonel? For that matter, where’s the captain?”

“Call Roque _Roque_ ; he doesn’t like being identified by rank. And they’re probably figuring out logistics. I think we’re off to Russia for some reason or another.”

“Actually, we’re off to Uzbekistan, looking specifically for the leader of an apparently very lucrative businessman who deals in little girls and boys,” Jensen absently replied. “Hey, do you think I’ll need two laptops or three?”

Cougar frowned at the cavalier mention of their intended destination. Apparently, Pooch was just as confused, because he asked, “The colonel told you all about it, then?”

“Huh? Oh, no, sir.”

Even all the way down here, Cougar could hear the cageyness, and while Pooch might be easygoing and sane (more so than anyone in their unit, apparently also including Jensen) that didn’t mean he was a sucker. “Well, then, new guy, how the hell do you know that?” he asked, voice gaining the steel that Pooch kept hidden from practically everyone behind that laidback exterior.

Jensen’s voice was too hopeful. “I, er… happened to overhear?”

“You’ve been eavesdropping, corporal?”

“No, sir, I haven’t. I’ve, been… er… looking up on you guys.”

Cougar found the elusive sock he’d been looking for, even as Pooch asked, voice incredulous, “And looking up at our files somehow landed you with the information on our next op? I’m surprised that what’s in our files is even halfway correct.”

“It’s not,” Jensen supplied too-helpfully. “See, what HQ does, is –”

Again, Pooch interrupted. “How often did you get in trouble for hacking files, corporal?”

Cougar smothered a grin as there was dead silence, and then a meek voice offering, “Not as much as I probably should have?” Cougar could hear the snark and smart-ass hiding behind that deceptive meekness.

Damn, this kid was growing on him, even with his funky scent.

Now at the top of the stairs, Cougar could see Pooch just inside the doorway to his room – well, he probably ought to start thinking of it as his _and Jensen’s_ room. “Kid, you’re gonna get your ass kicked out so fast –”

“S’not like it’s stuff that I’m gonna be spilling left and right, really,” Jensen pointed out.

“Only you just did, to me,” Pooch retorted flatly.

Jensen huffed, and muttered under his breath, “And obviously, that was a mistake.”

“What?”

“Nothing, sir, just commenting on how you and an enemy soldier are two different things. Sir.” Jensen’s voice had gone flat, wary, and Cougar paused in the hallway, listening. Jensen sounded different, tired and broken down and even a little pissed. Then again, Cougar was used to listening for intonations and nuances in voices and bodies, so when Pooch grunted something about speaking to Clay, Cougar couldn’t really fault him for missing the underlying pain Jensen seemed to be in.

Not that Cougar was all that certain why he cared that this guy was in pain. He left messages in chocolate icing on countertops, for fuck’s sake, woke Cougar up early, and danced in the presence of _Roque_.

But Cougar could tell when there was something inherently _wrong_ with a person, and when someone was hurting and lashing out in misguided retaliation. While he didn’t know what Jensen’s story was, he was pretty damn sure that Jensen wasn’t wrong, just… looking for a place to fit in. And Cougar could say that because that had been _him_ four years ago, when he’d been fresh out of high school and entered into the special operations training way too early because his skills with weaponry had been off the charts.

“I’m not so sure I should leave you your laptop, if you’ve been hacking – ah. Cougar.” Pooch looked over, distracted and Cougar could smell the acrid worry. Pooch was the glue that kept their team together, which meant he was the one most active in making sure they were alright. A new guy suddenly knowing intimate facts about their newest mission because he’d hacked into their files was definitely a threat, and Cougar could understand why Pooch was acting like this. Still, as Cougar set his clothes down on his bed, he could see Jensen just sitting on his bed, towel around his hips, glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, eyes empty and hooded and body posture tense and belligerent. Cougar raised an eyebrow at Pooch.

“What? Man, you gotta admit that –”

Cougar furrowed his brow at Pooch.

“That’s not fair. You don’t get to berate me ‘cause I’m worried.”

Lifting one shoulder, Cougar half-closed his eyes.

“Dammit. You’re a goddammned puppy, Cougar, not some jungle cat. Fucking little shit. Fine, you deal with him and explain him away to Clay.” With a muttered growl, Pooch turned on his heel and stalked away.

Cougar turned his gaze over towards Jensen, who was looking curious despite himself. “You do realize you just had an entire conversation with Pooch without opening your mouth?” Jensen asked.

At that, Cougar could only give Jensen a smugly superior look.

That seemed to startle a laugh out of Jensen, and he shook his head, rubbing at the spiky blond hair that apparently naturally dried like that – Cougar couldn’t scent any gel product, at least. “Well, I can tell what that means, at least,” he sighed.

Cougar looked at Jensen, worried, even as the blond male rubbed at his face. “Kicked out of the unit before, what, twenty-four hours passed? That’s got to be a new record, I bet. Shit.”

Cougar snorted, and Jensen looked up as if surprised. “You make noise?” he asked, startled out of his self-pity, apparently.

Rolling his eyes, Cougar stuffed his socks in his duffle and slung it over his shoulder. As he walked by Jensen, he put a hand on Jensen’s head and ruffled Jensen’s hair – why, he wasn’t quite sure, but even though Jensen stiffed for a brief moment, it seemed to bring him some kind of reassurance.

“Well, I’m gonna get dressed, I guess, and then I guess I better pack, since I’m either leaving the unit or going with you,” Jensen grunted, standing up. Cougar took a few seconds to look appreciatively over Jensen’s back, the broad expanse of it and the small white scars that probably came from a myriad of situations, perhaps some not even life-threatening. Then he turned and walked out.

Because hell, _no_ was he gonna get caught ogling the newest guy’s ass, not when Roque and Pooch were betting on how long it took for Cougar to get into Jensen’s bed. He was just going to find Clay and speak to him before Pooch cornered their commanding officer.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm officially at 75k+ words, and to reward myself for the massive inspiration burst I had yesterday about a plot twist, I am posting TWO CHAPTERS today. (Also, this chapter is Roque's perspective, and therefore short, because of all characters it is Roque I understand least. To make up for short chapter here, have an extra long chapter afterwards!) I am also celebrating the fact that I am far enough into the movie that I have started changing a few small factors in order to mesh my AU reality with the movie, so once this story hits about 70k words, you'll see a gradual divergence from the movie in small things while all major events will take place!
> 
> (If that made sense. I'm a bit tired at the moment. >_

“He’s an annoying little shit.” Roque watched Cougar slip out the mess hall and determinedly ignored Clay sitting beside him.

“I promised to keep him for three months.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that he’s an annoying shit.”

“You’ve worked with annoying people before.”

“Nearly got discharged ‘cause of them, too.”

Clay leaned back, sighing, and Roque watched Clay through half-narrowed eyes. He didn’t like this new guy all that much; Jensen was brash, cocky, and severely lacking in self-preservation skills. Not a good combination for a special forces operative and Roque would rather have a tech that knew he was supposed to be babysat then a tech who thought he was hot shit and could handle everything that was thrown at the team.

“Roque, we’re stuck with him for three more months. You read his file, I’m sure – you know is combat skills.”

“I know he’s an argumentative bastard that shouldn’t be given a second chance. And a _horse_ , goddammit. Not going to be able to tear a man to bits if he’s captured or any of that shit that recruiter-scientist-guy keeps babbling at me.”

“There’s a lot of stuff a horse can do outside of a combat situation, and you damn well know it, Roque. Besides.” Clay’s eyes narrowed at Roque. “There are a lot of commanding officers that would label you an argumentative bastard, too.”

There wasn’t anything Roque could say to that, and so he glared at his plate and stabbed the cardboard disguised as meat with his fork. After all, Clay was right – Roque had been one step away from dishonorable discharge until Clay had taken him in and kept him on. Roque had what the psych evals called ‘anger management issues’ meaning he didn’t have management of his anger at all. He was angry, the world knew he was angry, and more than once brawls in the mess hall, on the training grounds, and in bars were started because of him. Clay covered his ass on all of them, more times than he’d care to admit, really.

But this kid… Roque growled, annoyed, even as Pooch sat down beside him.

Clay tapped his fingers against the table, obviously annoyed. “Have you come to complain about Jensen, too?”

Pooch at least was smarter (or maybe just more respectful) than Roque, and instead of replying with the first words out of his head said softly, “He hacked the mission, boss. He’s got a motor-mouth. If he knows a lot of sensitive shit and then gets himself captured – he’s a fucking tech, he’s more likely to get captured than all of us, even if it doesn’t happen on this mission – I don’t know if he’d be able to keep all of what he knows behind his teeth.”

“Got a point,” Roque grunted.

“Shut it, you,” Clay growled, even as he turned to fix his gaze on Pooch. “I just had Cougar in here, vouching for Jensen’s ability to keep sensitive information sensitive.”

Pooch’s mouth dropped; Roque could sympathize. He’d been floored when Cougar had come into the mess hall and proceeded to state, simply and baldly, that he had confidence in Jensen and that they’d figure a way to work together. Longest single sentence Roque could remember Cougar saying, ever since Afghanistan.

(The second lieutenant who had given the order to leave Cougar behind was still MIA, and Roque knew they’d never find the body. Clay and Pooch might suspect him, but they didn’t know for sure and they didn’t need to know, either.)

“Cougs? The cougar was vouching for the horse?” Pooch repeated.

Clay’s hand went to massage the bridge of his nose. Roque tried not to feel bad that he (and apparently Pooch) were giving Clay grief about the new guy—

But come on. Dancing? _Dancing?_ Wasn’t that just the biggest way to completely lead up to an Ask, Tell situation?

“He’s on the team for three months. Cougar can apparently work with him, so if you can’t stand him, I suggest leaving him the hell alone. I’ve looked at his horse and he’s got a handle on it and I don’t care if it’s not a conventional form – this isn’t a conventional team. And Roque, why don’t you take him out to the practice range, work out some of your aggression and give him a reason to respect you instead of snapping at him ‘cause you’re hung over?”

With that, Clay got up and left the table. Roque growled at his food.

“Man. Cougar?” Pooch repeated, then turned to Roque. “Why don’t you like him?”

“’Cause he’s an annoying shit.”

And that’s all Roque really had to say on that matter.

***

Back at the house, Roque was enjoying a quiet sandwich when the new guy, Jensen, came wiggling into the room. Wiggling, because there was no other word for those vertical convulsions Jensen seemed to be going through. There were buds in his ear, and a wire slithered down the front of his ridiculously neon orange shirt that had some talking eggplant on it. Roque couldn’t be bothered. How the hell did they not kick out this flaming bastard?

Well. Clay was right about one thing. If he took Jensen out to the range – they had about two hours before they left, anyway – he’d at least manage to put the fear of Roque in this white-bread bitch.

“Jensen!”

Jensen didn’t seem to notice – possibly because of those fucking earphones or whatever – and instead was head first in the fridge, ass wiggling. Roque suppressed a shudder, but only just. When Jensen’s head popped back up and he turned, his eyes lit on Roque and he paused. There was that flash of _other_ that instinctively had Roque’s hackles rising. He hated that flash of _animal_ in a man’s eyes – he had been offered, practically begged, to join the Procedural ranks, but it was strictly volunteer and there was no way in hell he was ever going to be anything other than a _man_. He didn’t know why the hell Cougar had agreed to it, and he kept his contempt for Cougar hidden. Mostly. He wasn’t even trying to hide his contempt of Jensen. The point of the procedure, as had been told to Roque over and over again by the guy trying to recruit Roque into the Procedural soldiers, was to give the soldiers an extra edge if they were ever unarmed or out of ammo or ambushed. A horse – okay, hooves equaled bad, but one bad step and the horse was done. Horses were domesticated – the men who turned to German Shepherds, Dobermans Pinschers, Huskies, and Rottweilers had the exact same problem and were treated derisively by other Procedurals – and horses were, well, beasts of burden.

Nothing that made Roque particularly respect Jensen in any way for any reason.

Jensen pulled one of the buds out of his ear. “Yessir, Roque, sir?” he said, voice a bit cold and flat. Roque wanted to slap the insubordination out of him.

Instead, Roque stood up and jerked his head. “Come on. Let’s spend an hour on the range before we have to leave. See what a pansy ass like you can do.”

Jensen’s mouth firmed into a flat line, but he followed obediently enough.

There were other people on the range; Roque recognized a few but didn’t bother to spare them a second look. Jensen trailed behind him like a kicked puppy, and Roque just wanted to shoot him in the leg or stab him in the gut or something, get that damned look off his face. Not that he would, of course. Clay had given him strict rules about what he could and could not do to fellow teammates.

“Get a gun,” he snarled.

“Sir, yes sir,” Jensen muttered, grabbing one.

Roque turned around, squaring his shoulders and getting into Jensen’s personal space. “You sassing me, corporal white-boy?” he spat.

“Sir, no sir,” Jensen responded, voice even and flat, while his eyes danced with that alien light.

Grunting, Roque moved over to an empty station and lifted the gun. Besides Cougar, he was the best shot on the team, Clay coming in a close third and Pooch trailing behind them. Then again, Pooch never really needed to shoot much – as a driver, his hands were most of the time preoccupied with something else, so Roque couldn’t get mad at him for his poorer scores.

“Let’s get one thing straight here,” he said as calmly as he could, squeezing off shot after shot. “You’re a tech geek. You get babysat and we tolerate it until you float on to another team. We don’t tolerate smarmy assholes who think they’re better than the rest of us because you can play on a game system. We live in the real world and you’re gonna have to adapt to us, we completely clear?” He squeezed off the last shot, proud of the perfectly centered cross he had made – forehead shot, nose shot, neck shot, sternum shot, gut shot, and then one shot over the heart, another mirroring it on the other side. The lines weren’t completely straight, but they were impressive, and he turned to Jensen, grinning savagely. “I’m second in command because Clay’s a fucking pushover. You ain’t got a place on the team until you prove you can actually keep up. Got that, motherfucker?”

Jensen’s eyes narrowed, and that flash of _alien_ happened again, so fast that Roque almost missed it. Then Jensen lifted his piece and moved to the station next to him, squeezing off shot after shot after shot.

Jensen’s paper had an almost identical cross. Fuck, he might be just as good as Clay, maybe even a little bit better.

“Got it, sir,” Jensen said flatly, and then he turned on his heel and walked away.

Well, well, well. Looked like their tech had a pair.

Roque nodded slowly. He could live with that.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, the extra long chapter! =D

Linwood Porteous was the most unfortunate name a kid could have. In fourth grade, it had gotten his ass handed to him daily. Then he decided that if he wasn’t going to be able to beat the bullies back and if he wanted his mama to stop crying over his bruises, he was going to run like hell. That had only earned him the name bitch, as in a cowardly dog who turned tail and ran, and then bitch became Pooch because in sixth grade Linwood had built a radio controlled rocket and shot it all over the gym before having it land again at his table for science fair. And if he still got beaten, he could still run, and he could make the bullies’ cars die for no apparent reason. It all evened out, eventually.

But Pooch was Pooch in the army because of that damn dog.

It was on his first mission out, and his girlfriend Jolene had convinced him to go to a fair with her before he left. She had bought the ugly little bobble-head and proceeded to call it Mojito. “He’ll keep you safe for me and bring you home,” she had whispered against Pooch’s lips.

So Pooch had weighed that dog down (because some [most] of the maneuvers he had been expected to do as a transport specialist were _not_ designed with a freestanding bobble-head in mind) and installed a heavy-duty magnet on its underside and placed it on the dash every single mission he was in. Soon enough people just called him Pooch for the tiny dog he had, and Pooch didn’t mind. Linwood wasn’t as cool or as easy as Pooch, and even Jolene slipped sometimes and called him by his nickname.

In any case, he was rubbing his fingers over that dog’s head as he watched Jensen bob his head up and down like a pigeon across from him. They were sitting in a military plane, going to be dropped down into Uzbekistan, armed to the teeth, and Jensen was listening to music on his iPod.

“Unbelievable,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head as he looked over at Roque. Roque had taken Jensen out, and Jensen had come back without Roque. Either Roque hadn’t minded or Jensen had turned tail and run – in either case, Roque seemed more smugly sure of Jensen, and Jensen seemed just a tad bit warier of Roque than earlier.

Still. Not enough.

Cougar huffed a sigh by Pooch’s side. Turning, Pooch narrowed his eyes at the Mexican. “Don’t you start,” he warned. “That is some dangerous shit he can do.”

Cougar lifted an eyebrow and looked over at Roque.

“It’s not the same thing, dammit. Roque can’t look up our mission and put us in jeopardy before we even touch down. This kid could be a security risk. Hell, not _could_ – he _is_ a fucking security risk.” Pooch glowered at Cougar.

All Cougar did was smirk, that mustache quirking up and that cowboy hat tilting in a subtle taunt. Pooch growled. “I am not jealous or frightened of him. I’m not prejudiced because of his form. Don’t even pretend that’s why. He’s a fucking liability. He can do some serious damage if the bad guys ever get a hand on him, and I don’t fucking care that he’s had special forces training, because he’s a tech with the brains of a canary.”

Cougar glanced over at Jensen, who was warbling to himself as he fiddled with a laptop. A slow, almost predatory smile stretched across his face, and Pooch felt like throwing something.

“Just ‘cause you wanna get into his pants does not mean that you can just – just ignore the risk he represents!” he hissed furiously.

Cougar gave Pooch a wounded look and something very close to what Pooch called a pout on Jolene’s face. Kid was too pretty for his own fucking good.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Pooch grumbled, turning away from Cougar and crossing his arms across his chest, dropping his chin down. Might as well sleep – if he could, with Jensen caterwauling on the other side of the plane…

***

The plan was a brilliant plan, Pooch was certain. After all, it was a Clay-plan, and if Roque could manage to keep from blowing shit up and Jensen had not had to go into a room with no windows to download the information from the main server, and if Clay had bothered to inform both Cougar and Pooch that the compound they were going to was in the middle of fucking nowhere with no good place to find cover…

Well, if all those things had happened, it would’ve been an awesome plan.

But plans fuck up, or the bad guys fuck them up, and so Pooch and Cougar were outside the compound while Jensen was nabbed and Clay was still trying to get out and Roque was quickly being subdued, though Cougar was doing his absolute best to help Roque out. Still, Cougar didn’t exactly have a great line of sight, and Pooch was too far away to do anything besides launch a rocket and he wasn’t about to do that when three teammates were inside the compound. Clay finally managed to get out, but that didn’t change the fact that Roque and Jensen were still inside.

“No one listens to the Pooch,” Pooch complained, talking in third person as he often did only when highly stressed or extremely bored. He did it when he was looking to tease, too, ‘cause it drove Roque batshit crazy, but at the moment he was majorly stressed and not really caring who he was driving crazy.

“Shut up, Pooch,” Clay grunted, staring at the compound through narrowed eyes. “I’m pretty sure Jensen got the info. I’m not sure if he managed to transfer it to where it needed to go. We’re going in tonight to drag them out, but we’ll have to wait around a bit for it to get darker. No way in hell we’ll be able to drag them all the way here to the transport –” which was a really generous word for the fucking piece of shit Toyota that Pooch had hotwired because it looked about as crappy as the landscape, and conceivably would blend in better than a military-issue Hummer, which was what Pooch had _wanted_ and _asked for_ and _not got_ , “– so we’re gonna have to bring the transport closer, which means night cover. You good, Cougar?”

Cougar nodded absently, cleaning his gun. Only his eyes gleamed with the animal that lurked within, and Clay seemed to notice that as well, because he turned to fully look Cougar in the eye. “Sniper’s not gonna help in a windowless bunker, not if Pooch needs an extra hand and a distraction besides. I’m gonna want you to go in along with Pooch, while I provide a distraction.”

At that, Cougar hesitated before licking his lips. “You want me to go in as man or as cougar?” he asked.

Clay paused, thinking it over. Pooch could see definite pros to having Cougar come in as a cougar, but if it came down to it, he’d prefer a long-range hunter like a sniper to a short-range hunter like a cougar.

After a moment, Clay asked, “Can you scent for them? That might keep down the time the both of you are inside.”

Cougar nodded.

“You’ll keep yourself in check?”

Cougar nodded again, this time more decisively. Clay seemed content to leave it at that, and turned back to the weaponry they had with them, taking inventory and making plans in his head. Pooch let out a sigh. “Hope to god they decide to torture Roque for info, not Jensen,” he muttered. “Bad things happen to techs, and techs that know too much endanger everyone.”

“Pooch, shut the hell up.”

“Yessir, colonel.”

Darkness could not come quickly enough, but finally it was black enough outside that Pooch could start the car and silently make his way closer to the compound – as close as he dared, which still really wasn’t close enough. He grabbed his automatic weapon, even as Clay came out armed to the teeth and slipped towards the compound. Cougar was casually stripping down outside the car, dumping his clothes on the floor in front of the passenger seat. Pooch averted his eyes, and within moments a huge tan cougar padded noiselessly past.

Pooch followed behind Cougar, an automatic in his hand and a backpack full of medical supplies on his back. They made their way to an out-of-the-way corner of the chain-link fence and Cougar waited patiently as Pooch slipped out a wire cutter and clipped open a small enough space that they could fit through. Inside the compound, Cougar unerringly led them towards the main doorway. It was around that time that there came the unmistakable sound of an explosion and like an angry anthill, soldiers poured out of the compound, shouting orders at one another and running towards the source. It was easy enough for Cougar and Pooch to slip inside.

They met with guards, of course – it wouldn’t be easy getting in and getting out, but it definitely was made easier by the wailing fire alarm. Most soldiers didn’t bother with them, too focused on the flames that obviously hadn’t been put out yet. Cougar sneezed quite a few times – the smoke was a lot thicker in the hallways, now – and Pooch was fighting to keep his coughs quiet and stifled. Finally, Cougar came to a stop outside a door and sat back on his haunches, ears swiveling back and forth even as he sneezed one more time.

Pooch trusted Cougar to keep an ear out, even as he kicked the door open and came in, guns first. There was no need, though – the only people present in the room were Roque and Jensen, Roque dumped in the corner and Jensen tied to a chair, head hanging. Fuck. No way in hell Pooch could carry out Roque _and_ Jensen. Hell, he could barely carry out Roque on his own – Cougar would have to transform in order to help him do that, as well.

“Well, shit,” he growled, looking between the comatose men. At least, he hoped Roque was comatose and not dead. Damage control first; he had to figure out which one was the most hurt, and which one stood a chance of walking out of there. Kneeling by Roque’s side – Cougar was standing in the doorway, on guard – Pooch ran his hands over Roque’s body quickly. Cougar had training as a field medic, but everyone knew at least a little about triage and managing damage until they could actually get to a medical facility. Roque was badly bruised, beaten, and was shot in his right bicep and right calf. Gentle prodding against Roque’s side proved that at least three ribs were cracked, perhaps broken. A possible concussion, too – blood pooled behind Roque’s head and there was a rapidly growing knot. Swallowing down his curses, Pooch got up and moved over to Jensen, cutting through the rope and steadying the tech when he began to slump to one side.

Jensen’s ribs were messed up, too, and his mouth was dripping blood – whether from internal bleeding or because he’d been punched in the mouth or just a bit tongue, Pooch wasn’t certain. When he ran his hands over Jensen’s neck and head, looking for spinal and head injuries, Jensen moaned weakly.

“Jensen?”

“Need… ta buy… me dinner… ‘fore feeling me up,” Jensen panted weakly.

Pooch debated shaking Jensen awake. Maybe a slap would do better – shaking might scramble what little brains Jensen actually possessed. But one brown eye cracked open, even as Jensen’s head lolled back. For a long moment, Jensen just stared, before swallowing roughly. “Well, shit,” he panted. “First mission… with you guys… and I need my ass… dragged free.”

“Can you walk?” Pooch demanded, as the smoke thickened and Cougar growled from the front door.

“Wha? You… gotta be joking… Poochman,” Jensen panted, and now that Pooch looked closer Jensen’s eyes were massively dilated, even as the whites of his eyes were clear almost all the way around.

“Hey… you okay?”

Jensen began to laugh, hoarse and rough. “St-stupid-est question, Pooch,” he responded.

Turning to Cougar, Pooch motioned to the two of them. “I can’t carry both. You’re going to have to transform and help me out here, Cougs.”

Even in his animal form, Pooch could read Cougar’s body language saying _no_. Pooch lifted his lip to snarl at the refusal but a second thought struck him. Cougar would transform back naked, no weapon, in freezing Uzbekistan weather, to cross concrete and gravel. Cougar as a human at this point would be more of a liability than either Jensen or Roque. Cursing under his breath, Pooch turned back to Jensen and looked between the barely conscious tech and the unconscious Roque. “You can’t walk, and I can’t carry the both of your lazy asses outta here.”

Jensen blinked slowly at Roque’s body, then at the front door. “Gl-glass-es?” he grunted.

Pooch looked around hastily; he couldn’t see any nearby. “Nah, man, nowhere near here at least.”

“Ah. Well.” Jensen let his hang again and shuddered once, hard. “I’d ask… but you gotta… get Roque out first. Think I’ll… be pretty useless… at handling a gun for… a while.”

Pooch hesitated for half a second before shooting a glance over at Cougar. “I’mma get Roque out, then come back for Jensen. Will you stay here with him, or help support Roque with me outta this place?”

Cougar visibly hesitated, looking between them. Pooch could understand his frustration – the sooner Roque got out, the sooner they could come back for Jensen, and if Pooch was carrying a comatose man it’d be hard for him to defend himself if he ran across trouble, but just leaving Jensen behind in the first place felt oily. Finally, Cougar huffed out a rough snarl and placed himself besides Jensen – who stiffened, breathing hard through his nose like a, well, like a horse.

“Think the colonel’s little distraction is a lot more out of control than he meant it to be,” Pooch grunted as he made his way over to Roque’s side and somehow managed to wrestle the much larger male into a sitting position. “So if it gets too bad, Jensen, Cougar and you’ll have to at least try to meet me halfway.”

“Sounds… pretty good,” Jensen joked weakly. “But if you… hurry your ass up… I won’t haveta… do all the work.”

Pooch grunted, twisting his back and shoulders to get Roque into a semblance of a fireman’s carry, puffing hard. “Smart… ass,” he wheezed in retaliation.

How Pooch got out of the building, he’d never know. Roque was a good eight to ten inches taller than Pooch, a good fifty to sixty-five pounds heavier, and was nothing more than deadweight against Pooch’s shoulder and back. Pooch did his best not to show his weariness because Roque always went on and on about how Pooch should train more physically, should do some more heavy lifting and shooting practice because he wasn’t at the levels of Cougar or Roque or Clay. No sense in proving Roque right at this moment, not when so much was riding – literally – on Pooch’s shoulders. Somehow, Pooch staggered out of the building and somehow got Roque a reasonable distance from the building and _somehow_ managed to wake Roque up enough to place a gun in the man’s hand (and hope Roque was coherent enough to use it the right way).

Then he was flat-out running back to the door, dashing through the halls, liberally spraying any movement he saw with bullets because Clay better not be fucking inside and he knew he didn’t have to worry about hitting Cougar and Jensen, because they were still in the room. At least, he hoped so – the smoke was black, now, and Pooch had to duck his head and cover his mouth and hope to god he wasn’t going to pass out from carbon monoxide or whatever the hell was in black smoke.

He very nearly shot Cougar as the big feline exited the room – only Cougar’s indignant yowl (harsh and rough from the dry and smoky air) and Pooch’s quick reflexes had him pointing the gun up at the very last minute. Looking into the room, Pooch winced as he realized Jensen was very literally crawling on the floor, one leg dragging behind him.

“Couldn’t wait?” Pooch rasped as he bent down and got Jensen over his shoulder, hoping that he wasn’t making the wounds all that much worse but knowing he didn’t have the strength to carry Jensen (or, for that matter, Roque) any other way.

“Took – too – long,” Jensen wheezed in reply, but there was a steady tremor in the tech’s body and tension that spoke of something other than just worry about getting out alive. Before Pooch could ponder it too deeply, Cougar snarled and leapt.

Probably a guard had come around the corner – though Pooch wondered, as he stepped out and realized that the far end of the hallway was engulfed in flames, why anyone was still in the compound at all – but when Pooch got to Cougar’s side there was nothing more than three or four dead bodies and Cougar licking his whiskers.

“Nasty-ass… cat,” he panted. Jensen was as stiff as a board against his back, terrified, though Pooch could understand the terror. Still, that wouldn’t help them in the long run, and he forced his aching legs to get moving to keep up with Cougar’s every-increasingly frantic pace. Pooch wasn’t too upset at the rushed pace – he could feel the heat close behind him, and Jensen was making harsh noises against the small of his back. When they got out into open air, the entire compound seemed to be up in flames and for one heart-stopping moment Pooch was terrified that he’d placed Roque down only to have him burn alive because of Clay’s damned over-the-top distraction.

Cougar, however, either could still follow the scents or Roque was just conveniently placed on the path to the way out – in either case, following Cougar meant that Pooch damn near tripped over Roque’s boot and damn near did a swan dive with Jensen still on his back. Standing there, fighting not to sway with exhaustion and muscle strain, Pooch debated his choices. He could conceivably put Jensen down, pick up Roque, and make a break for it, or he could make a break for it with Jensen and come back for Roque. Either one was undesirable at the moment, what with the sirens in the distance (because a fucking huge bonfire was more important than a warehouse that was almost regularly stocked with little kiddies to be sold) and Clay nowhere in sight.

“D-down,” Jensen spat in the tone of voice that people used to say ‘I’ve-been-speaking-for-a-while-if-you-hadn’t-been-too-dumb-assed-to-listen.’

“If I put you down, might not be picking you up again,” Pooch gasped.

Jensen poked his ass – hard. “Down,” he repeated, more firmly than before.

Looking at the fire growing ever closer, Pooch sighed and slung Jensen to the ground. “What the fuck, Jensen?”

“If – I transform – easier for you – to carry,” he panted hard, stripping off his dog tags and then kicking off his boots. His belt he undid carefully, handing to Pooch as well, and then there was a slow whisper of movement over his flesh. Pooch stared in a mixture of interest and revulsion as leg muscles stretched and grew while Jensen’s blond hair turned black. His clothes tore off of his body as he made the shape change, and even if he looked dazed and wild-eyed (Pooch could remember somewhere about horses hating and fearing fire more than anything else in the natural world) he was still able to get up to his feet and stand there, weak as a newborn kitten, grey coat marred with streaks of red, flanks heaving.

Cougar moved over to Jensen’s horse form, and the grey horse shied a moment, breathing hard, sides heaving. When Cougar froze, staring straight at Jensen, Jensen seemed to get a hold of himself and sheepishly lowered his head, snorting at the ruff of hair at the base of Cougar’s head and spine.

Cougar sneezed again disdainfully, and then glanced at Pooch, who was currently trying to struggle up with Roque. Nearly scared ten years off of Pooch, too, when he came up and placed a huge paw on Pooch’s head.

“What the… hell, Cougar?” Pooch ground out from between tightly gritted teeth.

Cougar rumbled deep in his chest and looked over at Jensen. Pooch followed Cougar’s gaze.

Jensen was obviously favoring one leg over another. He was too big to crawl through the space Pooch and Cougar had come in through, and cuts and blood marred his coat in several places. His head was low, nose almost dragging against the ground as if supremely tired.

“What the –” Pooch began again.

With an irritated snarl, Cougar moved away from Pooch to stand beside Jensen and glance up at Jensen’s back.

Which, now that Pooch thought about it, was strikingly and sadly obvious. Pooch couldn’t carry Roque. Roque needed to be carried. There was a convenient horse standing right there.

“Jensen, you think you could carry Roque’s ass outta here?” Pooch asked, heart in his throat.

Jensen wearily lifted his head, ears swiveling towards Roque, who was still pretty much unconscious, though he would moan and mutter unintelligible words at random intervals. Finally, Jensen bobbed his head.

“Oh, thank you Jesus,” Pooch gasped. His job just got a hundred times easier, and so he began to drag Roque over to Jensen, who was obligingly on the ground now.

It took a bit of maneuvering, but soon enough Roque was slung over Jensen’s back, Jensen’s eyes were wild at the flames engulfing everything around them, and Pooch was just happy to know he didn’t have to try and lug Roque’s ass out of the compound. Grabbing at Jensen’s mane, he patted the horse’s head. “Okay, Jen, let’s getcha outta here. C’mon.”

Jensen followed easily enough, even if it was an awkward limp-shuffle that looked as painful as it must have been for Jensen. Cougar was once again point guard, and every so often he’d disappear around a corner, and when the three of them turned it there would be another dead body (or five) and Cougar would be ahead of them, tail waving in the air.

Cougar led them to the front gate, and Pooch often had to stop and fire volleys of bullets in the general direction of the people who were shooting at them while clutching Jensen’s clothes to his chest. The front gate was no longer guarded as heavily – dead bodies lay slumped everywhere. Cougar took a sniff and sneezed before padding past. Pooch took that as a positive sign and so led Jensen through as well.

Clay was at the car they had left nearby the gate, compulsively checking his watch. Pooch could barely believe that all that had been within fifteen minutes – then again, time ran differently when adrenaline was kicking your perceptions of the world and time into hyperspeed. When he saw them approaching a look of relief crossed his features before he motioned to the horse. “You guys took your sweet time getting out.”

Pooch narrowed his eyes at Clay, placing Jensen’s clothes, belt, dog tags, and boots in the backseat. “Did you _intend_ to set fire to the whole compound to make it shit for us to get outta there?”

On a different man, Clay’s expression would translate into a sheepish wince. On Clay, it came across as a twitch of lips and a drop of Clay’s gaze. “So they had a buncha gunpowder in one building I hadn’t expected gunpowder to be in… not like they’re gonna complain.”

“Cops are almost here – you ready Cougar?”

“ _Si_.”

Pooch glanced over to see Cougar tugging on his sleeveless vest over a long-sleeve shirt, cowboy hat on his lap. Jensen had transformed back once Pooch and Clay had gotten Roque off of the horse’s back, and while his wounds looked a little better, his leg was still messed up badly, ribs painted red and black, and he was clutching a hand close to his chest. He didn’t seem to have the strength to get dressed. Instead, he was curled up on the backseat, a blanket thrown over his naked body, eyes glazed and fist clenched around the dog tags.

Damn, he looked young. And Pooch felt bad that he’d not wanted him on this mission… but still, it had been him, not Roque, tied to that chair, which meant it had been him, not Roque, that had been interrogated, and Pooch still worried he’d blurted things out that he shouldn’t have known about, let alone spoken about.

Cougar seemed to realize where Pooch’s line of thinking was going, because he narrowed his eyes at him and shifted on the seat to put himself more between the two of them. Roque was starting to come around, belligerently demanding answers and explanations, so Pooch gladly ignored the techie and Cougar and Cougar’s apparent newfound desire to smother and overprotect Jensen in favor of questioning and worrying about Roque.

“Where’s the damn info?” Clay growled.

Pooch shrugged, looked over at Cougar. Cougar lifted one lip in a sneer but turned obligingly to Jensen and poked his side.

The kid shivered a little before croaking, “’f y’… no’ a ho’meal… lemme ‘lo.”

“Corporal!” Clay barked.

That seemed to penetrate, and Jensen’s head lifted and he blinked hazily at Clay. “Sir?”

“The info you were supposed to get; where is it?”

Jensen blinked one more time, then slid a hand under the blanket. He stopped, puzzled, then looked around. “M’bel’?” he muttered.

The three of them that were coherent (Roque was still pretty much out of it, poor guy) tried to make sense of the muddled whispers and words that seemed to be stuck in the tech’s throat, until Cougar managed to make sense of it. He pointed at the belt Pooch still held in his hand.

“Your belt, Jensen?” Pooch offered.

The tech’s eyes traveled over to Pooch, and he squinted. “Ne’g’ddmn glss,” he grumbled, but he reached out for the material Pooch was handing over. A couple of quick twists, and then the belt buckle was swinging open, revealing a small case, and Jensen’s fingers fumbled on a slim microchip. “Th’y’go, boss.”

“Everything’s here, Jensen? I don’t wanna find out that we gotta come back here – let’s get it done right.”

Pooch could understand why Clay was asking – it was a combination of nerves and frustration that two of his men was hurt and worry that they’d not be able to come back even if they were ordered back – but Jensen obviously took it the wrong way. Emotions flashed over his face, too quickly to really register, and he all but spat out, “E’rrthings there, colonel. I do m’job’righ.”

Well, shit. Clay’s eyes narrowed at the antagonistic tone, and Pooch could abruptly understand why this kid got bounced around so often. Not that this was enough to get Jensen bounced, of course, but constant sentences like that? Sneering at a commanding officer, implying others _didn’t_ do their job right, in the middle of the field? That kinda stuff added up and Pooch was more surprised that Jensen was bouncing around in the army instead of out of it, with a sharp tongue like that.

“You’re treading dangerously close to insubordination in the field, corporal,” Clay growled.

Jensen looked mutinous, opening his mouth as if to continue arguing, when Cougar let out a soft rumbling growl, reaching for his gun. Pooch turned to see that the authorities were close enough that he could make out the individual sirens by hearing alone, and they were dangerously close to being found out if they stayed where they were. Clay apparently came to the same conclusion, for he poked a finger at Jensen. “We’re not finished here, corporal. We _will_ discuss proper in-the-field behavior soon enough.” With that, he jerked his head at Pooch, slipping to Roque’s side to bring the bigger black man around fully.

Pooch slid into the driver’s seat easily. Some people were born smart, others were born sharp, and others were born with scary hand-eye coordination, like Cougar – but Pooch, Pooch was born to _drive_.

It was easy enough to quietly turn over the car’s engine, reverse the car back far enough to give them some space, and then roll the car out with no lights and no fast movements down a small side road at the pace a local might drive. Pooch knew the road systems inside and out; he’d had Jensen bring up the local maps and satellite pictures to give him a better idea of the terrain, and he never liked going in blind. He had them at their base through all the back roads, running them this way and that to shake loose any potential tails. In the end, when he pulled into the abandoned factory that they were making their (cold and drafty) base for this op, he was completely sure that they were safe and no one was following them, Cougar had managed to pull on his pants while in the car and shove his feet into his boots, and Clay had gotten Roque pretty much patched up enough to stop him from oozing blood and lucid. It still took both Clay and Pooch to get Roque out of the van and Cougar followed, awkwardly helping Jensen. Poor Cougar – Jensen was easily six inches taller and quite a few pounds heavier. All muscle, though, unlike their first tech Corbin, who was a bit too chubby to really have gone through special forces training…

But that was tangential.

Their evac was a day or two away, too far away for comfort, but they’d have to deal. After all, they weren’t _supposed_ to have blown the compound sky high… they’d have to live with the consequences until it was time. Pooch helped Clay stretch Roque out on one of the sleeping bags, and Cougar lowered Jensen to another. Jensen promptly crawled into it and curled up, asleep within minutes.

“Report, Pooch,” Clay sighed.

Pooch related everything he’d seen going in, the general disarray of most of the guards but a few well-trained, focused guards who had been stationed nearby Jensen and Roque. Clay frowned at that (Pooch agreed with the frown – why would the good guards be put to guard the two captives, when there were kilos of cocaine and tens of humans kept in cages below? Why weren’t the good guards manning security, especially if both captives were neutralized?) but didn’t interrupt, and so Pooch continued before saying quietly, “His eyes were dilated, and he wasn’t too out of it to talk. I think they pumped him full of stuff and began asking questions, Clay. I’ll say it again – I’m not sure having a talkative member is really productive in the long run, not if we’re taking him into the field with us.”

Clay didn’t respond – he massaged the bridge of his nose and looked over at Roque, who was grimacing as Cougar cleaned out the wound in his thigh and before wrapping gauze over it. “What do you say, Roque? How much do you know about what happened?”

Roque hefted one shoulder, teeth gritted. “While I was awake? The kid was just babbling on about shit, some fucking – _shit_ – some fucking superhero or something. Gah – Cougar, what the _fuck_? They started out with me, but I was pretty much out of it and when they started hitting, got a lucky one on my ribs – knocked me clean out.”

Cougar made a soft noise of consternation at that and moved to Roque’s side. Roque tried to bat him away, but when Cougar snarled, he stilled and resigned himself with ill-grace to the careful inspection of Cougar.

“Ribs were already gone and they hit, or their hits made the ribs go?” Clay asked gruffly. Pooch bit his lip – if Roque’s ribs had already been broken and they hit them just right, he could have a punctured lung or organ or anything and they wouldn’t know until their evac got here.

“The hits made’em go,” Roque replied, surly and pissed off.

It wasn’t until Cougar sat back on his heels with a cautious nod that Pooch relaxed. If Cougar couldn’t find anything, then it wasn’t something they could fix. If Roque was bleeding out inside, there was nothing anyone could do for him at the moment, and Cougar would have been able to tell if there was internal bleeding from discoloration, smell, and tightness of skin that shouldn’t be that tight.

“So the kid was fine? Held up okay?”

“From what I know, yeah,” Roque sighed, even as Cougar began to work on the bullet wound in his bicep. “Coulda just been putting on a front for me, but then they’d have loosened the ropes or something, right? If he was being cooperative, they’d want him to stay that way?”

Clay looked over at the young face and pinched brow of the newest member. “Not necessarily,” he replied heavily.

“He would not have spoken.”

It was so rare to hear Cougar speak that it took Pooch a couple of seconds to figure it out. By the time he did, though, Clay’s gaze had riveted on the slight male that was tying off the gauze on Roque’s arm.

“What makes you sure?” Clay finally asked, voice suspicious.

Cougar hefted one shoulder. “I would not have spoken.”

“Yeah, but you’re _you_ ,” Pooch pointed out, because people, could they just not see? Talking was all well and good – it had taken them a lot of time to adjust to Cougar’s _non-_ talking – but Jensen _could not keep his mouth shut_. “Jensen’s… a motor-mouth at best.”

Shaking his head, Cougar motioned towards Jensen. “He is a horse. Devoted. Loyal. He is trained like you, like me. Like Roque.” His mouth quirked up in a smirk. “His horse is – like a dog, but without sharp teeth. If he had broken, said anything, he would have told us before we took him to the car.”

For a long minute, Clay didn’t say anything at all. Then he let out a long sigh. “If you’re wrong, and he did speak, then they’d know where we are and be on us soon enough. You gonna trust him with our lives?”

“He is our teammate.” That seemed to be the extent of Cougar’s words, because he turned away from Roque and made his way to his own sleeping space, taking his rifle out to clean.

Pooch looked at Clay, wondering if he was going to take the word of someone who most definitely had not been present and, not only that, but knew no more about Jensen than the rest of them. But Clay seemed to accept it, and so Pooch bit his tongue. He wasn’t about to start conflict and tension in the group, not if it had gotten smoothed out already.

“Cougar, you take first watch, wake me in four. Pooch, you’ll take the last four. Alright?”

Cougar inclined his head, and Pooch was all too happy for the respite. Crawling into his own sleeping bag, he stared blankly at Jensen across the tiny, sorta circular center of their sleeping bags where the space heater sat. He didn’t even notice when he dozed off.

***

“Your watch, soldier.”

Pooch came awake instantly at the whispered command and soft touch at his shoulder. With a slight nod, he sat up, blinking in the darkness. Cougar was almost head-to-head with Jensen, stretched in his own sleeping bag and trademark cowboy hat tilted over his face, arms folded behind his head. Roque was snoring across from Cougar, and Clay was starting to burrow into his own sleeping bag which was a bit diagonal from Cougar’s.

Standing, Pooch shivered in the cold air but did nothing more than that – the cold air would at least keep him awake through his shift, so he couldn’t complain all that much. He scratched at the back of his neck, feeling the slight stubble of hair growing back. Mentally making a note for a haircut, he padded silently over to the tiny window and stared out at the wintery landscape.

In the abandoned factory, the Losers had commandeered an office up on the third floor – the highest floor – to give them a bird’s eye view of their surroundings as well as get them closer to the roof for their drop and evac. The office was still in pretty good shape, but there was little one could do to keep the chill out without making it look as if someone had recently been fixing the sagging ceiling and the rotted boards. It was why they were all circled around that heater, and why Pooch desperately wished to be back in the United States. It might just be hitting fall, there, but it was much closer to winter (if not actually winter) here. His breath fogged in front of him and he let out a soft sigh.

There were many tricks soldiers used to keep themselves awake during a watch. Cougar, Pooch knew, stripped down his guns and oiled them to perfection. Clay wrote in his tiny journal. Pooch? Pooch sketched.

He wasn’t a good artist – _hell_ , no – but it kept him occupied and in that half-state of concentration and alertness that served best to keep him aware of his surroundings. Plus, it gave him a way to remember Jolene and her house and his grandma and Jolene’s parakeet.

It was midway through his sketch of the damn bird (green and yellow monster loved to try and take a chunk of Pooch’s ear every time he came over) when there was a soft rustling sound. Pooch looked up from his position by the window, half-reaching for the gun until his mind registered it was Jensen getting up, moving stiffly. Pooch watched him through half-lidded eyes.

Jensen seemed to ignore Pooch completely – he limped into a standing position and made his way to a small corner, where he promptly stripped (shivering like a leaf in the wind, damn white-bread boy) and transformed into his animal form. Pooch wasn’t quite sure what Jensen was trying to do (not like a horse would be useful up here, after all) and so just watched silently as he slipped his pencil into his breast pocket and the tiny sketching journal into his back pocket. There was a noticeable difference here, too – when escaping, Jensen had transformed smoothly, quickly, between one breath and the next. This transformation was a pain-staking one, Jensen gasping and scrabbling at the ground as his body seemed to fight the transformation, flesh sliding over bones. At least it wasn’t as bad as some other transformations Pooch had seen – transformations that had left blood spatters on the ground and taken ten to fifteen minutes of bones cracking and flesh ripping – but it wasn’t what he’d seen before, either, and it worried him.

After a couple of minutes, Jensen turned back, just as slowly, lips blue and panting harshly, and Pooch realized with some amazement that the cuts and wounds were noticeably smaller and a bit further along in healing than they had been. After leaning against the floor weakly, head hanging low and chest heaving erratically, Jensen groped for the clothes he’d stripped off and weakly began to draw them back on. When he was in the middle of twisting into contorted positions to get his pants back over his messed up leg, Pooch asked quietly, “You okay, Jensen?”

“ _Shit_! Jee- _sus_ , Poochman, make some fucking noise!” Jensen gasped, falling back as his eyes focused in on Pooch. “Scared me half to fucking death.” Breathing out hard, he clutched his arms across his chest. “How the fuck are you not fucking freezing just sitting there?”

Pooch couldn’t help his mouth from softening into an amused smirk as he watched Jensen hastily draw the rest of his clothes on and stagger to his feet, swaying and shivering. “You cold, Jensen?”

With a hiss of air through his teeth, Jensen limped over to Pooch’s side, staring out the window briefly before refocusing on Pooch. “Fuck yes I’m fucking cold,” he whispered through chattering teeth.

“Why are you up?”

Jensen hitched a shoulder. “Can’t sleep. Too much –” he made a motion at his head, stirring his finger expressively. “Why are you up?”

Pooch jerked his chin at the window. “Keep watch.”

“Ah.” Jensen shuddered again, hard, and blinked once. “Our evac?”

“Two days out.”

“Huh.” Jensen blinked again and sighed. “Fucking child-sellers.”

Pooch tilted his head at the taller male and decided there was no harm in asking. “What happened? With you and Roque and everything?”

Blowing out a sigh, Jensen shook his head. “They knew Roque ranked higher than me. Stuck a needle in him, punched him around. He passed out, though – think whatever they gave him reacted really bad. He was kinda raving and shit. Plopped me in that chair and just started whaling away. Fuckers.”

“Injected you?” Pooch asked.

Jensen nodded. “At the same time they injected Roque, right at the beginning. Felt like fire. Burned, made everything too bright, too loud, so I rambled on and on about my old commanding officers and how shitty they were.”

“What were they asking about?” Pooch prompted when Jensen trailed off.

“The colonel, and our formula. Who sold them out, and where we were from. Who we represented. Hell, I think one of them asked me my favorite color – it was starting to blur a little before you came in.” Scratching the back of his head, Jensen hitched a shoulder. “I think I started listing the episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer chronologically in the end.”

“Buffy?”

“Ah, yeah, kinda an old show, geeks normally like it. Buffy has a bunch of seasons, so there were a lot of episodes to discuss, and for a while they thought I was talking about what our scientists could create. I think part of that was Oz’s fault, really. Maybe I shouldn’t have discussed his character so much, but he’s just so adorable and a ginger besides...” Once more, Jensen shuddered hard. “I’mma go back over to the heater, okay?”

Without waiting for Pooch’s answer, he made his way over to the small circle of sleeping bags and sat down on his, shivering.

Pooch didn’t know how to respond to that, and so just settled for keeping watch. Until the traders actually found them, he’d trust that Jensen kept his silence.

Besides, it was kinda hard to hate a kid who subverted an interrogation by discussing Buffy the Vampire Slayer in detail.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, short chapter, but I'm at 80k+ words AND next chapter will start bringing in the plot twists that will change this and make it (more) AU from the movie. That chapter will be about 6k words, give or take a hundred.
> 
> ALSO. Good news is that the camp I'm helping run won't need me there until the 20th. WHICH MEANS my last update will be on the 19th. ALL IN ALL, if things go as planned, I should have between 95k to 100k worth of words written for this story before I leave. Updates should resume sometime around the 23rd of August (a one-month camp, I know, I'm dreading the no-internet access) and continue in the same pattern from then on.
> 
> THANK YOU TO ALL MY LOVELY REVIEWERS AND KUDOS-GIVERS. YOU ARE MY COOKIES AND MILK.

“You’re back here?”

Jake quirked a smile at Mary. “It’s ‘cause you missed me.”

Mary snorted at him and eyed his chart. “Dr. Reynolds will be in soon enough, to try and pull out of your system the drug you mentioned. It’s been broken down in Roque’s physiology and it might still be floating around yours.”

“So I’m a test tube?”

Mary’s silver hair fell into her matronly face as she chuckled, checking his IV drip before stepping back. “I think Dr. Reynolds said Petri dish, but test tube can be accurate.”

Jake laughed softly, shaking his head. Couldn’t speak to the pretty young things without stumbling over his tongue (or, if in a particularly foul mood, tearing them to shreds with sarcasm and criticism) when normally he could babble on and on without end, but give him an elderly woman and he was right at home. Mary was one of the few nurses who didn’t mind talking to him late into the night when he couldn’t get to sleep at all and couldn’t get out of the hospital bed to wander the halls and entertain himself.

“Your commanding officer come in to speak to you?”

Jake’s mind fell back to Clay, to when Clay had taken him aside when Jake was coherent (and not shivering so hard his teeth were creating a drumbeat that drowned out speech and thought) and dressed him down so thoroughly that Jensen had been hanging his head and desperate to prove Clay wrong by the end. It had been… different. Not yelling, not even accusations, but careful and calm explanation of who was in charge and who wasn’t, and who gave the orders and who didn’t, and who could talk back – and who couldn’t. It was the first time that Jake had actually paid attention to such a dressing down. Not that Clay was the first commanding officer to be calm, or even explanatory, when dressing him down. But Clay had… Jake wasn’t sure what to call it. Clay _kept_ his attention. Maybe Clay had to deal with someone who had been easily distracted earlier in his command, but when Jake’s mind would start to wander or began to tune out what Clay was saying, Clay would do – something. Shift his body language, step closer or lean forward, lean back or make a gesture…

Jake was beginning to think Clay would be a commanding officer he’d end up disappointing, someone that Jake would _want_ to stay with but be unable to.

“He came in, at the beginning. Should be showing up again soon,” Jake finally answered.

“That’s good, dear.” Mary smiled. “Good he’s taking a close interest in you. Hallmark of a good commander, that. You keep that in mind.”

Jake sighed softly. “I will, don’t worry.”

The door opened, and Dr. Reynolds walked in. A brisk woman (Jake had awkwardly tried to hit on her, because she really was smoking, but [like normal] he’d been shot down), Dr. Reynolds tolerated no bandying about and was straight to the point.

“Your blood tests show that some of the agent is still in your bloodstream, enough that it should explain why your joints are still acting up and it’s hurting to transform in any way. However, it’s difficult to isolate and even more difficult to map. I’ve passed it on to Dr. Engels and his research team, because this is more their field than mine.” She picked up his chart, scanned it quickly. “However, I will tell you that this agent is meant to interfere with your ability to transform, removing the conscious control you have over the trigger neurons that shift your DNA. The agent attacks the trigger particles that the injection bonded to your DNA; if you had not had those particles in your DNA, nothing would have happened except, like Captain Roque, you would very likely have blacked out as it next goes after the neurons and acts as an inhibitor to brain activity. Captain Roque was in a bit more danger than you, in fact, because the agent could focus on the trigger particles and in Captain Roque it had nowhere to go.”

“So the fact that it hurt to transform and I’ve been told not to –”

“Is because the more you transform while this is still in your blood, the greater chance it has to latch onto the trigger particles and destroy its bonds with your DNA.” Dr. Reynolds set his chart down and looked at him. “Quite frankly, I could let you go, as your wounds are no longer life-threatening, but we want to make sure the agent isn’t set to mutate in an unforeseen way and make sure the trackers in your trigger particles hasn’t been damaged too much.”

Jake hesitated a moment before cocking his head. “But you’ve never seen it before me; wouldn’t _everything_ therefore be ‘unforeseen’?”

Those sharp eyes narrowed at him. “Fine, Mr. Smart-aleck. We’ve hypothesized how it is going to purge from your body, and we’re not sure our hypothesis is correct. We’re keeping you for observation until we’ve either managed to confirm our hypothesis via study of the compound or it just naturally works itself out of your body some other way.”

“Ah.” Jake leaned back in the bed with a sigh and rubbed at his head. “Well, okay, then. Is there anything I can do while I’m here? Can I have my laptop, at least?”

She hesitated a moment, considering it. Finally, she nodded slowly. “I don’t see why not. Though I’ll have to regulate its use – I don’t want you focused on it to the exclusion of your healing. You need to rest, and recharge, and you get way too worked up when you have a laptop in front of you.”

Jake glared at the yellow hospital bedding. “It was just the once, and it was an intelligent debate!”

“You busted open your stitches.” Fixing him with a gimlet stare, she moved towards the door. “I’ll mention to your commanding officer that you can have your laptop – and that there are restrictions on its use.”

Jake waited until the door was closed before he muttered, “You’re no fun.”

***

Jake’s days dragged on as round after round of blood tests took place, Dr. Engels poking and prodding and making disapproving noises over his prone body. It was a happy, happy day when Jake was finally released from the hospital and allowed to return to his unit’s house. Dr. Engels and his team had apparently not found any adverse side effects (beyond the ones that would manifest should he transform before the compound worked its way out of his system) and his most recent blood test had come back clean. Pooch had been the one to get him from the hospital, bringing him some spare clothes so he could get out of that ridiculous hospital gown, kidding around with him gently, and offering to carry Jake’s laptop.

As if Jake would ever be too weak to carry his laptop.

But apparently this recent mission had – perhaps not _solidified_ his presence in the team, but certainly gone a ways towards building him into the team’s foundation. Pooch was more at ease with him. Even Clay had looked up when they entered and nodded gravely at Jake (Jake had the odd urge to bow deeply in return, and just barely restrained himself from doing so) before asking whether Jake needed anything. Though, to be fair, it wasn’t so much a question as a “Jensen, you good?” To which Jake smiled and nodded and Clay nodded and looked back down at the crossword puzzle he had and then Jake moved towards the stairs behind Pooch.

They passed Roque in the kitchen – he was watching another game, munching on nachos, and when he saw them he fixed Jake with a threatening glare. “Learn to keep a fucking gun on you when you’re hacking shit, you got it, Jensen?”

“Yes, sir!” Jake responded immediately, wondering if Roque was going to dress him down, too, and wondering if it would be against the bro-code to ask if Roque was doing okay, especially considering that whatever they had both been injected with, it was supposedly more deadly to Roque than to Jensen.

But all Roque did was nod decisively and turn back to the game, and Jensen wasn’t ashamed to admit that he was terrified of a man who could produce a knife the length of his femur out of thin air. A bit leery, Jake trailed behind Pooch, laptop clasped loosely in one hand and the other rubbing against the back of his neck. “This is just a little creepy, you know?” he mumbled as Pooch bumped shoulders with him at the doorway to his room before leaning against the doorframe.

Cougar looked up from his bed, his rifle stripped down and an oilcloth in his hand. He met Jake’s gaze for a moment, one eyebrow lifted in faint concern.

“I’m telling you, fucking creepy,” Jake muttered, uncomfortable with the level of attention he appeared to be getting now. Moving to his bed, he set his laptop down on the small night stand and stretched out, toeing off his boots so they dropped on the floor. “I’m gonna just chill for a while. We not heading out yet, are we?”

“We’ve got a week before our next assignment.”

Jake nodded – well aware of when their next assignment began and where it was going to be, but fully aware that Pooch seemed to have a problem with him knowing ahead of time and the knowledge that Pooch was still standing in the doorway. He thought it best not to tempt fate with him and with a soft sigh pretended that that was news to him. “Okay, then.”

There was the soft sound of movement and then Pooch mumbled something under his breath before the door of the room closed. Jake could hear Cougar still moving around, and he kept his eyes determinedly shut. He really _was_ tired, truly he was, but…

“You know our next mission.”

The words were soft, spiced with a Mexican accent, the tone loose and fluid. Jake blinked in surprise, then twisted around to stare slack-jawed at Cougar.

“You spoke!”

Cougar quirked the corner of his mouth up in a smirk (that was decidedly _not_ sexy, thank you libido, calm down). “ _Si_.”

Jake gaped for a few more moments before Cougar made a short motion at Jake’s laptop. “You already know.”

“Ahh…” Jake’s brain was still trying to catch up to his situation. “Uhh… yeah, yeah, I know – I mean – well – I was bored, you know, and I can’t exactly do anything in the hospital room _except_ play on my laptop and you don’t know how good I’ve gotten at hiding it from the nurses by now only I think they were beginning to suspect me and –”

“ _Bueno_.”

Jake’s blather stopped short as he searched through his mind for the appropriate translation. His Spanish was much, _much_ worse than his Italian, and Italian was the language where he managed to get the words for bathroom and hospital mixed up. “Good? What’s good?”

Once more, Cougar indicated the laptop.

“That – that I looked it up? I mean, okay, yeah, I know I shouldn’t, but really it’s not like anyone tells anyone _anything_ in the military and how can I know what info to look for if I’m getting the orders when out in the field? And nothing’s come bad out of it yet, and I just think it’s a good–”

“Jensen.”

That smoky voice arrested him, and he swallowed convulsively.

Cougar smiled, a flash of strong white teeth in that tanned face, muscles bunching as those arms began to run back over his gun. “It’s fine.”

Jake stared at Cougar a while longer before slowly lying back down, staring up at the ceiling. For a while, he didn’t know what to say, how to react, until a genuine grin began to spread over his face.

He really might be able to fit in this group. He might be able to _keep_ this group.

He couldn’t wait.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Normally, I don't post unless I'm at least somewhat close to my word count goal, but this has been a rough couple of days and I'm getting over a fever and it's just been... crazy. Plus I'm writing Roque's point of view and trying to justify his betrayal and... arghhhh. Anyway. I figured I'd update anyway, and I WILL be at 90k words by next Monday, I swear I'm going to try my hardest to make that goal...
> 
> So. Hope you enjoy, and sorry for not making any progress in writing between this update and the last.

Clay looked down at Jensen’s file, toying with his pen, as another major – Major Browning, if he remembered correctly – ranted about Jensen’s latest prank. Clay had to admit, it was a brilliant one, but pretty stupid. Especially considering that the only recruit who could prank an entire team and _just_ that team on this scale _was_ Jensen.

(Though, to be fair, there was another youngster who apparently was trying to live up to Jensen’s pranks, but he was still on a much smaller and much less catastrophic scale. For now.)

“– should be _discharged_ , the fucking asshole, I –”

The general listened to Major Browning, face impassive, even as the major began ranting about favoritism and rules and quoting regulations. Clay kept himself from wincing visibly.

This was a supremely idiotic move on Jensen’s part. Rigging the speaker system to play Britney Spears singles was bad enough – then there was the time he’d managed to slip some type of food dye in the showers so concentrated it turned the skin into a different color completely and no one liked the shade of neon orange Jensen had found – then there was that time that Jensen decided to make all the televisions show the episodes of Buffy (backwards) – and the time Jensen had gotten pissy at something some other team had said and had hacked their personal electronics to show only blue screens when they tried to log in – but this…

This took the cake.

“I’ll discuss it with Corporal Jensen’s commanding officer,” the general finally said, voice flat and serious. Clay did his best not to tap his pen nervously against the file that was absurdly thick. Hell, it was probably thicker than his and Roque’s and Pooch’s and Cougar’s put together… and he’d thought _he’d_ done some stupid things (at the prompting of Roque, back in his younger days, but still – all Roque’s fault) before.

With a few more muttered growls, the major turned on his heel and stalked out of the office. There was a heavy silence for a long minute, and then the general heaved a sigh.

“Well, Lieutenant Colonel? What do you have to say for your man?”

Always a trick question. Clay cleared his throat. “With all due respect, there isn’t an excuse I can give for this, other than stupidity, but we both know Corporal Jensen’s test scores.”

The general eyed him harshly for a minute before leaning back in his chair. “Alright, then, Lieutenant Colonel. How about you explain to me why the corporal is acting like this?”

Why? Oh, there were so many reasons. For one thing, Clay was pretty damn sure that Major Brown’s boys had done something to piss Jensen off, though he wasn’t aware of the particulars. For another thing, Jensen most likely had been dared by Roque to do it, or had talked himself into impressing Cougar by it. His chains of logic were always far more knotted and quite frankly incomprehensible to most outsiders.

But the biggest reason for Jensen’s acting out?

“Sir, I believe it’s just a case of cabin fever. Admittedly, that’s no reason at all for what Jensen did, but my entire team has been antsy, and they haven’t been allowed off-base for three weeks.”

The general shot him a pointed look. “They’re not allowed off-base, Lieutenant Colonel, because their commanding officer has trouble following directives in the field.”

Again, Clay had to hide a wince. He hadn’t followed directives exactly – his last mission had been to retrieve a chemical formula that terrorists had gotten a hold of, and while he normally didn’t follow the rules to the letter, he did accomplish the mission objective. This time, however… the formula those terrorists had had was one that wasn’t in any way one that should be in the hands of _anyone_. And yeah, sure, it could always be remade and most likely _would_ be remade – but it wouldn’t be on Clay’s hands. He wasn’t about to put that capacity to torture and slowly kill on such a large level in anyone’s reach – not even his own. So his superiors (obviously) were not happy with his failure to prevent the files and formula from “burning” along with the building.

Still, that was no reason to take it out on his team, especially since Jensen very obviously and specifically went stir crazy when forced to stay in one place for any amount of time, even on missions.

The general sighed hard, and shook his head. “I’m not gonna kick him out, but he’s got to realize how serious this is, Clay.”

Clay blinked at the general – what, did the old man think he just winked at Jensen and let everything slide? _Roque_ wouldn’t stand for that, and couldn’t the old man trust that Roque would at least impress the severity of Jensen’s actions into Jensen’s hide through CAPE and the like?

“Jensen goes into solitary for five days.”

Every muscle in Clay’s body locked tight, and his fingers convulsed on the pen. “Solitary, sir?”

If there was one thing that the formula was supposed to do, it was supposed to make the Procedural soldier react aggressively if kidnapped. There had been many different versions of the formula, all trying to incorporate different aspects the United States government wanted in order to counter the European black-market werewolf formula, but the number one component of the formula made the formulaic soldier extremely resistant to captivity. Procedural soldiers were never supposed to get captured. They were supposed to die before then.

The old man stared at him from across the table, eyes tight but no give in his face at all. “Solitary. Those were explosive devices no matter which way you slice it, and those are strictly forbidden on base. I don’t care that they exploded glitter and food dye. They _exploded_. Solitary. Five days.”

“Sir, Jensen –”

The general slammed his fist down on the desk, face red and teeth practically bared in anger at Clay. “ _Five. Fucking. Days. Colonel._ ”

“Sir.” Clay swallowed, and he met those furious eyes and realized this was something against Jensen, specifically – oh, part of it was keeping Clay in line, showing him what the higher-ups could do to his men, but there were lots of things that Jensen could be subjected to that would punish him sufficiently without actually discharging him.

Solitary confinement?

Standing up, Clay met the general’s eyes, letting steel and resentment and just barely controlled violence peek out of his eyes as he sketched a salute. “Yes, sir. I will inform him, sir.”

“See that you do.” The general leaned back, teeth still gritted, and Clay turned on his heel and left.

***

The entire walk back to his unit’s housing, he ran it over and over through his mind. How was he going to tell Jensen? What was he going to do if Jensen refused? Was he expected to march Jensen to solitary, or would the general send some common MPs to drag Jensen out?

Roque was sitting in the armchair, Pooch on the couch, when he walked in. They both looked up, Roque opening his mouth to say something – but both paused when they saw the look on his face.

“What’s up, boss?” Pooch asked warily.

But Clay wasn’t about to tell Jensen’s team before he told Jensen himself. “Where’s Jensen?” he asked instead, stepping out of the front room into the tiny hallway.

There was movement from behind him, and then Roque and Pooch followed him up the stairs.

He could hear Jensen nervously babbling away – with almost ten full months together, Clay had learned to tell when Jensen was talking to release steam, talking to calm his nerves, and talking to try and cover up the fact that Jensen knew he was in major shit and hoped no one else knew – inside his and Cougar’s room. No answer, of course, but Cougar didn’t speak often so that wasn’t a big indicator of whether Cougar was actually in there or Jensen was talking to himself again.

Clay knocked once on the door and then pushed it open. Inside, Cougar was leaning against the wall, hands behind his head and hat tilted down (which could either mean he was asleep or that he was listening with his eyes closed – even though he’d been with Clay for near six years, Clay still couldn’t tell) while Jensen stood up, walked a bit, then sat back down, knee bouncing, before he got back up again. When the door opened, though, Jensen stopped his nervous popping up and down (mid-pop, which was how Clay knew that Jensen was in his classic ‘bleeding-off-nervous-energy’ routine) and instead turned to the door.

“Clay, I –”

Well, apparently he had a really shitty poker face, because Jensen immediately went stock still, nostrils flaring, and oriented completely on Clay. “What’s the matter, sir?” he asked quietly.

Fluid movement from the corner of his eye revealed Cougar had leaned forward, tilting his hat up and looking intensely at Clay. Maybe it was just their ability to read body language – but no, Pooch and Roque had figured something was wrong, too. Maybe it was just because he didn’t believe what he was about to tell Jensen was the right thing to do for this situation.

“Cougar, out, please. Pooch, Roque, back up.”

For one heart-stopping second, he thought Cougar was going to challenge him on the order. Clay had established his authority over Cougar very early on – COs had to do that, had to present themselves as the biggest badass in the group or the Procedurals would walk all over them – and he had neither the time nor inclination to get into a dominance fight right now. But a long moment later, Cougar stood up, brushing by Clay as Pooch and Roque, who had been practically breathing down Clay’s neck from behind, stepped back.

Clay closed the door.

“They discharged me, didn’t they, sir?” Jensen said softly, sinking down to sit on his cot, staring at the floor. “Fuck.”

“They didn’t discharge you,” Clay said gruffly. “You got five days of punishment.”

Jensen blinked. “Five – days, sir? That doesn’t… seem so bad?”

“Solitary.”

For a moment, Jensen didn’t move, didn’t say anything. His knuckles, though, went white as he gripped the edge of his cot. “Solitary, sir?” he repeated in an oddly level voice.

“Yeah.”

Clay looked at Jensen’s form, and he knew objectively that Jensen was a god-damned spec ops soldier and one that was damned good at his job. Jensen could handle it, if it came down to it – but there was little worse for Jensen than being forced into solitary confinement, taking into account Jensen’s personality and the formulaic aspect.

And he had a good idea why Jensen was being targeted like this.

Behind him, the door opened, and Clay turned to glower at the three men who were staring in shock at him. Some tension eased out of Jensen’s frame, though, and so Clay didn’t snarl at them to get out. Pack – or, in Jensen’s case, herd – was important, and obviously Jensen felt more relaxed when they were present.

“Isn’t – isn’t solitary for – for violent offenders?” Pooch asked, voice a little hoarse.

“The devices Jensen used were – they exploded. They’re explosives.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Cougar hissed, and everyone turned to look at him in surprise, but he was moving over to Jensen, gripping Jensen’s shoulder tight, and his hat hid his eyes. He leaned forward, murmuring into Jensen’s ear, and Roque glanced over at Clay, eyes searching for a reason. Clay couldn’t meet Roque’s gaze easily; it had been his orders on the mission that had landed Jensen into this mess, and Roque would sense that immediately. Thankfully, Roque didn’t call him on it at the moment, instead leaning a shoulder against the doorframe as Pooch swore softly under his breath.

Jensen recaptured Clay’s attention, asking calmly, “Are you walking me to solitary, sir, or – or is it happening another way?”

Clay was about to say he would _never_ walk Jensen into solitary, because he firmly believed Jensen didn’t deserve solitary for dousing members of a team in glitter and food dye – but it had sounded like Jensen was asking, subtly (and Jensen didn’t normally do subtle, so Clay wasn’t sure), for Clay’s escort.

Thinking about it, Clay could see how that made sense. After all, the alpha of the pack often established the mood of the pack. And yeah, Jensen was a horse and horses didn’t have packs, but they were social animals and they followed leaders just like any other pack predator or human, for that matter.

“If you want me to walk you, Jensen, I will,” Clay said quietly.

With an abrupt motion, Jensen stood. “Yes, sir. If you aren’t busy, sir.”

Hell, no, he wasn’t busy.

***

“They can’t do this to him, Clay. This will break him. He can’t handle being alone, no outside stimulation, no one to speak to and nothing to listen to, for five days.”

Clay scrubbed at his face with a hand, breathing in deep. “I know that. You know that. Hell, I would’ve said the general knows that. But I can’t countermand that order, and even if I could, I would have to end up discharging him from the military. Only you know the military won’t let him go, especially not when he’s a Procedural, and they’ll snatch him up and put him in a lab or some shit.”

Pooch scowled at the table. All of his men were in the kitchen – Cougar at the stove, fiddling with something or the other, Roque sitting across from Clay with his arms folded and a ferocious scowl on his face, and Pooch was pacing the small space between the table and the end of the kitchen.

“What was the reason given?” Roque finally asked.

Clay let out a sigh. “He used an explosive device of some kind with the – with the prank he pulled on that team. Explosive devices are enough to get a man discharged, and you know it, Roque.”

“Why didn’t they discharge him?” Pooch growled. “Why’d they pull this? They’ve made no secret that they’d bounce him from team to team because of his authority issues, and that we were his last chance – why didn’t they just kick him?”

A frown marking his face, Roque asked, “You wanted him kicked out?”

“No, but – fuck. _Fuck_. No, I don’t.” Pooch let out a heavy sigh and sank into one the chair between Roque and Clay. “It’s just – they might as well have done it, you know?”

With a slow shake of his head, Clay said softly, “It would have been worse with him gone completely. And he’s a strong kid, we know it – we’ve seen what he can do. And he knows it’ll only be five days, not any longer. As long as he keeps his horse in check… he should be just fine.”

Cougar took whatever it was and put it in the oven, setting a timer, before washing his hands in the sink. His movements were controlled, enough so that Clay could see the cougar peeking out from behind the tight constraints of humanity.

“Cougar?” Clay asked after a moment.

Cougar turned to look at Clay, cocking an eyebrow. “He will be fine,” he said, voice low and rough with conviction.

Clay wasn’t sure what to say, whether this was a symptom of Cougar missing a packmate or – or something more. He knew he shouldn’t ask – he didn’t _want_ to ask, when it came down to it – but quite frankly there was nothing _to_ ask about at this moment. Cougar hadn’t done anything with Jensen, he was quite certain, and though he had thought Jensen might have been interested when he’d first joined, the kid had either gotten over his crush or he’d buried it deep. Cougar had been amused and a bit patronizing, but nothing more. Surely there shouldn’t be any reason for Clay to worry what Cougar’s reaction would be to all this.

No reason at all.

Instead, Clay shook his head and turned his gaze on the other two in the kitchen. “Well, I’m not sure if they’d like to slam all of us, and Jensen just gave them the first opportunity, or if this is enough for the general to slap at me, but in any case keep a low profile and don’t give anyone a reason to pull you in for a reprimand.”

“You got it, colonel,” Pooch sighed. He stared morosely at the table a while longer, then shoved away from it and stalked upstairs. Cougar nodded absently before tapping a finger on the counter. Clay looked back at him, and Cougar made a slight jerking movement towards the command central cells.

It was no difficulty for Clay to translate. “Sure, you can visit him. No guarantees he’ll know you’re there, but you can if you want.”

Cougar nodded again, and moved out of the kitchen towards the stairs.

That left just him and Roque, and Roque hadn’t said a word beyond asking for the reason behind Jensen’s lock-up. After a couple of moments, Roque sighed heavily. “Could this have anything to do with what we found last mission?”

That was an unexpected line of questioning, and Clay blinked at Roque for a moment without saying a word. “Come again?” he asked.

“I ain’t stupid, Clay – we were supposed to retrieve some formula and it was some bad shit so you had Jensen rig everything to blow. What I’m asking is, could this be because they wanted that formula badly?”

Unsure of what Roque was searching for, Clay finally said slowly, “I would assume the reason they’re pissed is because we failed to follow the field orders, and the orders were to return with that formula intact.”

“Why didn’t we come back with it, Clay?” Roque pressed.

Clay shuddered a little. He’d seen the tests that had been done with the formula, seen what the prototypes could do to a human being and the consequences of them. “Because no one should ever use that on anyone, no matter the reason.”

“But why didn’t we bring it _back,_ Clay? We blew up that lab, but it’s probably in some other lab somewhere else that they can get a hold of. Why did you make that call?”

Now it seemed like Roque was questioning his judgment, and his voice turned hard when he replied, “Because maybe they would find or recreate or reproduce what that hellish thing was, but it wasn’t because I did anything towards it. I’m not about to sit back and let evil continue when I have a choice in the matter.”

“You weren’t _supposed_ to have a choice, Clay!” Roque hissed, eyes narrowed. “That was the whole fucking point – you were given orders! We’re soldiers, Clay – we follow orders, goddammit!”

Clay shook his head, hard. “No, Roque, we don’t, not when it can cause that level of destruction. We’re humans first, Roque, and being spec ops we are given leeway in the field to make the best decision possible. You would never want that to happen to your worst enemy, I can absolutely guarantee it.”

“Jensen’s in solitary because of this, and now we all gotta watch our step, and you can bet that our next mission will be worse and that they’ll give an order like that to you again and when you don’t follow it we’ll all be reassigned and you’ll be in jail for treason, Clay!” Roque pushed away from the table violently. “Your actions affect all of us, Clay, and don’t you fucking forget it.”

With that, Roque stormed out of the room while Clay sat there in silence, eyes on the tablecloth.

As Clay was about to get up, Cougar walked into the kitchen again and came to a stop directly in front of Clay.

“Cougar, I really don’t –”

Cougar let out a rough growl. It was deep enough – bestial enough – that Clay jerked his head up to meet those inhuman eyes set in a too-human face.

“Roque has no right to say that,” Cougar said, voice rough and thick with his anger – and his animal. There was a bestial twist to his words that made them almost too difficult for Clay to understand, and Clay worried that he’d have to talk his sniper down from the rage that was currently coloring those dark eyes. “ _Cabron_. I saw, what that did. Had you brought it back, I would have left this unit.”

Clay tried not to feel too touched. He knew his unit trusted him, would take his back and be by his side in the field. It had been… disconcerting to know that his second was questioning his judgment in the field, even if he’d obeyed while they were actually _in_ the field. Hearing that Cougar supported him should not have this big of an effect on him.

Only, it did.

“ _Burro_ would have destroyed it even if you had not told him to,” Cougar finally finished, once he’d gotten himself back under control, and Clay was still too focused on recovering from the speech Cougar had given him to reprimand him about the nickname that drove Jensen crazy. The amount of words Cougar had used seemed to wear him out, because his shoulders slumped and he let out a tired sigh. “He wanted to know how the terrorists had gotten a hold of it. He was hacking it just last night. He thinks our scientists created it.”

Something cold lodged in the pit of Clay’s belly. “ _Our_ scientists?” he repeated.

Cougar made a sharp motion. “Not – not _ours_. But – American. Or American-funded. You see?”

Clay swallowed heavily. “I think I do.”

***

In the morning, Clay made his way over to the detention cells and requested to look in on his man. The warden waved Clay in, mentioning that Clay wasn’t the only visitor that had come to see Jensen, but that Clay couldn’t talk to Jensen - or interact with him in any way.

“Got a one-way mirror, ya see? Though it’s made to look like part of the wall, through some fancy procedure of something,” the warden pointed out as he led Clay into the depths of the on-base prison. “Sound-proofed walls, food comes in via mechanized tray. No human interaction. Usually used for the Procedurals that go completely animal, until the order comes that they can be executed, but sometimes used when we got a really violent normal offender. Only got the one cell, though – doesn’t see a lot of use.” The elderly man hitched one shoulder uncomfortably. “Young kid. Feel kinda bad for ‘im, but he’s in there for a reason, yeah?”

“He’s being used to teach me a lesson,” Clay muttered under his breath.

Thankfully, the warden didn’t seem to hear – or was kind enough to overlook it. Instead, he turned one more corner and nodded. “There ya go. I had another one come and visit him last night, and earlier this morning. Just sat there, didn’t say a word, quiet as could be. Respectful kid.”

Cougar. Clay probably shouldn’t have been as surprised at hearing that as he was; Cougar had grown insanely protective of Jensen, especially as they learned to work together in tandem and trained in their animal forms together when off-mission.

“Thank you, warden,” Clay murmured, loud enough for the man to hear. “I won’t be long.”

“Can be as long as you want, son,” the man smiled at Clay. “Commanders got it harder when they gotta watch one of their boys suffer.”

Clay didn’t even notice when the man left, staring at Jensen as Jensen paced off the confines of his cell. Jensen was obviously talking to himself, and while his eyes looked hollow, he seemed no worse off than how he looked on one of their longer missions that required him to be locked up for an extended period of time in a single room while they laid low. He was proud at least that it wasn’t affecting Jensen more; he knew just how much it could rattle the younger soldier if he had nothing to go on except his own company. Horses were, after all, social creatures. They needed the herd and removing them from it could be cruel unless they were used to being alone – which Jensen, social animal that he was, most definitely was _not_.

But Jensen’s calm acceptance, even with his nervous tics that had betrayed his worry, and Cougar’s steady acceptance that Jensen would be just fine reassured Clay that this would do nothing more serious than intensify Jensen’s cabin fever.

Because Jensen could hold his own, too, and he wasn’t solely defined by his animal. He was much more, and proved it continuously, running into burning buildings even thought his horse was terrified, keeping his calm even when his horse must have been screaming at him to run and keep himself safe. Jensen was a part of their team, and he’d proven it, and he’d been just as horrified at finding the formula and what it could do as Clay had – and had, in fact, been the deciding factor when Clay made the call to destroy all evidence of it.

But to think that he was here because he had done some hacking on the side…

Not that that was so unusual. After all, Clay had caught hell from his supervisors fairly regularly about Jensen’s extracurricular computer activities – and from the few times he’d sat down to talk with Jensen about it, he was certain that the higher-ups weren’t catching more than ten or fifteen percent of what Jensen actually did. Clay’s argument to his superiors was that it kept Jensen occupied which meant Jensen wasn’t around to get offended at some (practically imaginary, half the time, the guy had just been _sneezing_ not snorting at Jensen) slight and slip frogs into a unit’s shower and toilet in the dead of the night. Normally, the higher-ups agreed with him unofficially and officially informed Clay to make Jensen back off.

What could Jensen have hacked that would have made them this upset? Or was Cougar (and Jensen) imagining things, things that really had nothing to do with why Jensen was here? Wasn’t it really because Jensen had given the general the perfect opportunity to scold Clay?

Rapid movement caught Clay’s eye, and he looked back into the cell to see that Jensen was throwing his arms dramatically, yelling and shouting and moving about. Worried, Clay stood up, wondering whether Jensen was having some type of fit and needed medical attention. Then Jensen threw himself on the bed and splayed out, and Clay blinked. When Jensen popped back up, hands on his hips, stalking around, Clay began to smile ever so slightly. The last movie Jensen had watched was some Shakespeare one – Hamlet, he thought. It looked like Jensen was acting it out.

Yeah, his tech would be alright, and he’d have to make some quiet, unobtrusive inquiries to figure out what the hell had pissed the general enough that this was the appropriate response.

Making his way out, he turned the corner and stopped, eyes narrowed. At the warden’s desk was a man, dressed smartly, with cold eyes and a light scar running down his throat. The warden was shaking his head emphatically.

“No, no one can go into his cell. Solitary means solitary, and unless you got a pass from the old man himself you can’t go in. Sorry.”

The man leaned forward as if to intimidate, but Clay knocked his knuckles lightly against the barred door. Both looked up, the man with a sour look that flashed, ever so briefly, into a look of pure hatred before that was wiped away and it was just a general dislike. The warden looked up with a relaxed smile, but Clay kept his eyes on the man even as the warden got out from behind the desk and unlocked the door to let Clay out of the cell area. “There ya are. Yeah, it’s always a bit hard to see your men like that, but he’s keeping himself occupied, so he should be fine.” Turning back to the man, he jerked his head at the door that Clay had just closed behind himself. “You could go in and sit and stare, if you want, but you can’t speak to him.”

The man finally inclined his head, ever so briefly, and Clay watched as the man turned and stalked away.

“Damn CIA spooks give me the creeps,” the warden muttered. “Better hope they’re not here to offer your man better pay for some job or the other – the CIA often can afford much more than us army grunts can.”

Clay watched the man go with a feeling of foreboding. “I don’t think Jensen would agree to work for him in any capacity for any sum of money.”

“Well, now, that’s loyalty,” the warden said, but Clay wasn’t listening anymore. Tipping his head, he slowly made his way out of the correctional center and back to his unit’s house.

***

It was at noon on the day Jensen was to be released that Clay and Roque and Pooch, all sitting on the couch watching some explosions from some action flick or the other, were startled when a familiar voice said indignantly, “Not one of you could come to get me out of my horrible predicament? You’d rather watch Vin Diesel walk around in his tight shirt and drink beer? Well thanks, guys, I know where I stand with you. I’m gonna go give Cougar a piece of my mind and then I’m going to shower in _private_ , thank you very much.”

Their heads whipped around to the door, where Jensen stood with his hands on his hips. For a heart’s beat, no one moved, just stared, until he rolled his eyes and something else flashed across his face as he turned to walk past.

“What the hell?” Pooch gasped, even as Clay jumped to his feet.

“What are you doing here, soldier?” he asked, voice harsh with surprise from Jensen’s unexpected early release.

Jensen’s eyes met his levelly, even as Cougar came into the front room with wide eyes. “I was released and told to head back to my unit. Sir. If I have one.”

“You have one, Jensen, why the hell would you think otherwise?” Roque growled from his position in the armchair.

“Well, none of you seem particularly happy to see me here. Was I supposed to be transferred, sir? While I was – out?”

Clay put a heavy hand on Jensen’s shoulder, dragging the kid’s skittering gaze back to Clay. If Jensen was in horse form, he’d have held his head, tried to calm him down, but in human form with human boundaries, all Clay did was squeeze gently, keeping Jensen’s attention on himself instead of the others in the room. “Don’t take that tone with me, Jensen,” he rebuked, voice gruff but mild. “We were told that we weren’t to get you until five in the evening. That you wouldn’t be released until at least sixteen-thirty, but to give you a half hour to clean up and get ready to leave. Why the hell are you here _now_?”

Jensen blinked, tilting his head to the side and body language beginning to relax. “I, uh, they came in and told me I was supposed to go. Sir.”

“At what time?” Pooch demanded.

“Uh. Ten, I think? Maybe ten-thirty. I – the warden said I should wait for you. So I did. But when it hit lunchtime I was just a bit too hungry to just sit there so… I walked over here.” Jensen craned his neck a little to look around Clay and at Pooch. “You – you were told five?”

There was a ding from the kitchen, and Cougar turned and almost _fled_ the room, causing all four sets of eyes to stare at his retreating form curiously. But it was Clay who let out a long sigh and rubbed his thumb against Jensen’s shoulder in a soothing circle before letting go and stepping back. “Sixteen-thirty, if you want to get technical, but that you weren’t allowed to leave the detention center until seventeen-hundred in the afternoon. We thought that a bit excessive, considering your solitary was for five days and technically at fourteen-hundred your full one-twenty hours were up, but the general was quite insistent and clear.”

“Ah. Well, then. That explains it.” Jensen blinked at the three of them before his stomach rumbled. “And I’m fucking starving. Prison food is shit.”

Pooch broke into laughter as Clay felt a smile tug at his mouth. “Well, son, I advise that you don’t do anything so supremely stupid to get yourself thrown in again.”

For some reason, Jensen’s eyes went hard, fast, and he dropped his gaze. “Nossir, I won’t.”

Roque and Clay shared glances, worried about the uncharacteristic tightness in Jensen’s voice, but Pooch didn’t seem to notice and instead dragged Jensen into the kitchen, talking about the latest gossip and how rumors of Jensen’s prank had gotten out among the soldiers.

“They let him out early,” Roque murmured.

Clay nodded, brow furrowed. What possible reason could they have to do that?

At lunch Jensen was his normal self with all of them, laughing and joking and plowing through Cougar’s bean and rice casserole like a pig at a food trough. Or, perhaps more accurately, like a hungry horse. When the others had gotten up and left, Clay asked quietly, “Did anyone come and speak to you?”

Jensen had been gathering the plates and moving them to the sink to get washed. His movements stilled at Clay’s questions and he asked, with an odd note in his voice, “Who would speak to me? I was in solitary, remember? That means no outside contact.”

“I mean after, when they deliberately let you out early and kept us away. Did someone come and speak with you?”

Jensen seemed to be debating with himself, turning on the water and dumping the plates and silverware in with a clatter. He stood there, staring, before nodding slowly.

“Who?”

A bitter laugh slipped through Jensen’s lips, and he turned, blue eyes hard and cold. “Some CIA sonuvabitch,” he said conversationally. “Offered me a job. Said my hacking skills were going to waste, that there were a lot of places I could put my skills to better use, for better pay.”

Clay kept his eyes focused on Jensen’s. “And?” he asked softly.

“What do you mean, ‘and’?” Jensen demanded, eyes flashing as his infamous temper reared its head and focused in on Clay. “As if I’d leave this unit! I mean – okay, yeah, army pay’s for shit and we get a lot of crappy assignments and some guys are just assholes, no offense colonel, but – but where would I go? And how do I know they don’t just want to cut me open and yank out the injection from my veins?” Suddenly pursing his lips, Jensen dropped his eyes and turned back to the sink.

“What makes you say that, Jensen?” Clay asked, voice hard as he stood up.

“Nothing. Never mind. They probably just wanted me for my hacking skills, that’s all.”

“Jensen,” Clay said warningly.

For a long moment, Jensen didn’t say anything, and then he hitched one shoulder almost carelessly. “I don’t know, colonel. I can’t tell you why that guy seemed off and why I didn’t want anything to do with him. I don’t know what he was fishing for, or what he was implying. I don’t know much, but I do know he’d have kept talking at me longer if I didn’t just get up and leave. And he couldn’t really bother me with the warden right there, but he sat across from me and waited, and when the warden went to lunch… I decided to just come here. It’d be easier, after all, and I was right – he didn’t follow me all the way back here.”

Clay stared at the young man’s broad back as he scrubbed at the dishes, then turned his gaze to Cougar, who was silently leaning in the doorway, listening to Jensen’s every word. Cougar’s eyes were feral, glowing with his beast, and Clay caught and held them.

 _You look out for him, you hear?_ Clay said with his eyes.

And he knew Cougar had understood his look, because Cougar nodded decisively, and then came into the kitchen to help clean up the plates by Jensen’s side.

No, Clay wasn’t ever going to ask. But Cougar kept Jensen reined in most of the time and could talk Jensen out of his crazier schemes, and Jensen kept Cougar grounded and human most of the time. So he wouldn’t ask, but he could nudge.

Subtly, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S.: I have figured out that next chapter will be around 11k words. Yeah. That's how much I love Jensen's POV. And then my last chapter before I leave will be around 800 words. Pitiful, isn't it? But that 800 word chapter is literally the start of the movie, so all backstory will be complete and from then on I'm going to be writing "deleted scenes" - i.e., trying to explain how the Losers got from Nogales to New Mexico to Miami to Houston to the Port of LA without killing one another or Aisha.
> 
> (and if I did a two-chapter update to make up for the ridiculously short 800 word chapter, that'd leave you at a cliffhanger and I feel that that would be cruel since I'm going on a month-hiatus.)
> 
> P.P.S.: I'm compiling a list of scenes that won't be "shown" in the main story. So far I have this:
> 
> ~Mission where Jake's horse form comes in handy  
> ~Mission where Cougar's horse form comes in handy  
> ~Mission where Cougar and Jake work together in horse and cougar form  
> ~Max/Wade scene in India  
> ~Max/Wade scene w/ singularity event  
> ~Max/Wade scene w/ planning for Port of LA  
> ~Sex scene b/w Jake and Cougar {properly written out, 'cause you guys deserve porn [and I like writing it]}  
> ~Mission where Cougar gets sick b/c chocolate still in his system  
> ~Background of Cougar  
> ~Background of Roque  
> ~Background of Aisha  
> ~Background of Wade and Max  
> ~Mission that got Jake into solitary  
> ~Fluff between Cougar and Jensen in their other forms
> 
> IS THERE ANYTHING MORE YOU'D LIKE TO SEE?
> 
> EDIT: 7/14/12, fixed eye color. So embarrassed. :">  
> ALSO ADDING TO LIST:  
> ~Cougar on catnip  
> ~horse!Jensen and cougar!Cougar playing with Jensen's niece  
> ~Cougar riding horse!Jensen in the water to help exercise muscles and getting dumped in  
> ~~(maybe?) A previous situation where Jensen hacked where he shouldn't and got in trouble from superiors.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOOK AT HOW EARLY (for me, at least) I'M POSTING THIS.
> 
> From 12 am to 3 am I went from 82k words to 87k. WHICH MAY NOT SEEM LIKE A LOT TO OTHER EXPERIENCED AUTHORS BUT 5k IN THREE HOURS WITHOUT THE INTERNET DISTRACTING ME (too much at least) IS AMAZING. I ALSO HAVE NOT SLEPT MUCH MORE THAN THREE HOURS. Sorry. I'll stop capslock!shouting now.
> 
> Now I'm at 91k, the Port of LA scene halfway done, and have been doing some major add-ins to the scenes instead of keeping them canon, as I am now branching off into my weird head-AU-thingy.
> 
> And in this chapter you have to suffer through my attempts to not write E/explicit level porn (because I'm saving that for the deleted scenes and also, I am more than slightly embarrassed to be writing porn _in the first place_ ) and keep everything Mature yet tasteful. I hope I succeeded.
> 
> THERE YOU GO MY LOVELIES. WE ARE NOW RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVIE. 11,092 WORDS TODAY. ENJOY. (again, next chapter will just hit 800 words, but I figure it's better than a cliffhanger before my hiatus, so there you go.)

Cougar was driving him insane.

Jake was about ready to tear his hair out. Every time he turned around, Cougar was there, smirking, smiling, sliding close or offering a hand and Jake had successfully buried the attraction he had felt on their first meeting very, very deep and he wasn’t really appreciating Cougar undoing all his hard work in a matter of days.

Okay, in reality, it had been happening over the four months since his run-in with solitary and that CIA guy, but it had been _really_ bad for these past few days. Of course, part of that was because their most recent mission had finished and Jake had managed to get his fingers broken on his right hand and was awkwardly trying to do everything with his left until those on his right healed. It wasn’t even really his fault this time – this time Roque had pulled a bit too far ahead of Jake and when the trap had sprung and Jake had been caught in a net, Roque hadn’t been able to double back and cut Jake down before the guerilla forces had come and dragged Jake into the compound. Luckily, they had only dragged him to the barn, one of his captors stomping on Jake’s hand, before they had turned and left. Normally – say, if Jake was handcuffed or chained in any way – Jake wouldn’t attempt a transformation. Handcuffs on his wrists would translate to handcuffs hobbling his horse, and that was _if_ the handcuffs stayed in the correct place in order to not be digging into flesh and leave deep wounds in Jake’s forelegs. This time, though, Jake had just been left tied up, because Cougar was awesome and drawing their attention away, and so he had painstakingly chewed himself free (really, all he needed to do was weaken the rope enough that the transformation would snap it the rest of the way) and then had transformed before kicking the door down and trampling pretty much everyone. He’d gotten quite a few bullet wounds – a horse presented a bigger target than a man, go figure – but the worst had been the realization that the transformation had only broken his fingers further. His dominant hand was all splinted up, and he had been yelled at by Clay because apparently the only reason he had any other wounds beyond the broken fingers was because he hadn’t stayed in that goddamn barn and waited to get rescued. Instead, he had cracked ribs and bullet holes along his thigh and abdomen along with an awkward hand.

And it was the hand that frustrated Jake the most. A broken dominant hand meant spills in weird places, frustrated growls, and a generally annoyed hacker who didn’t have the patience to peck away on his laptop and so resorted to finding other things to do that could actually be accomplished by using his left hand. Roque and Pooch had taken advantage of the fact that they weren’t confined to the base after this mission and were out, Pooch with Jolene (Jake had once called Pooch Jolene’s bitch but Pooch had quite savagely beat him in poker and stripped from Jake quite a bit, so that nickname wasn’t going to be brought out again anytime soon) and Roque just… out. It was assumed Roque went on drinking binges and randomly showed up at all hours of the night heavily wasted and hung-over as hell the next morning. Clay was on base, but he was attending meetings or some shit, and Cougar would normally be out, catting around.

Normally.

Because, in the thirteen or fourteen months Jake had been with this team, he’d come to realize that Cougar was a complete man-slut. A whore. A love-‘em-and-leave-‘em kinda guy who moved through the female (and, Jake had been interested to notice though the only reason he _had_ noticed was because he was watching Cougar so carefully [ _not_ stalking, thank you Pooch], some of the male) population of the bars they visited like a starving man through a banquet. And when Cougar was in a bar? No one even looked at Cougar’s teammates. He understood now why Roque hated going out with Cougar. (Clay didn’t seem to care, but that was because – Jake was beginning to realize – Clay attracted some _crazy_ bitches, one of which nearly set Jake’s hair on fire because she was pissed at Clay and missed Clay with the lighter.) While Jake hadn’t ever really been interested in female company for all that he tried to practice his flirting skills on them – he was horrendously, geekishly awkward, and it showed – if anyone, anyone at _all_ , showed any kind of interest in him, Cougar was there to slip between him and that girl. Hell, Cougar even did it once with a waiter that had gotten close to Jake and Jake was actually looking forward to some kind of sexual satisfaction that didn’t come through his own hand alone.

Jake could tell exactly when Cougar was going to intercept his potential partner, too. Cougar swaggered (and yes he _did_ swagger, even if he adopted that adorably clueless face and blinked those black eyes guilelessly at Jake when Jake demanded Cougar teach him how, Jake _knew_ a swagger when he saw one) into the bar, sat down, and proceeded to take off his hat and turn to give the entire bar the Eye.

Like fucking magic, all unattached female attention was suddenly riveted on Cougar. (And a few males. Like Jake’s. Not that it was obvious.)

Cougar would take his shot of tequila, knock it back in one smooth swallow, put his hat back on his head and tilt it rakishly, and then saunter over to the pool table, slouching his shoulders. Within seconds, he had at least one girl at either arm, giggling and flirting and purring. Within minutes, he had at least five around him. And while he seemed to dispense kisses freely, he would gently push away hands that too obviously sought to grope his (well-muscled) ass or wound towards his (silky) hair.

Meanwhile, Jake (who was usually the only one stupid enough to not learn his lesson from the millions of other times this has happened, unless Pooch was feeling sympathetic, but that was rare because Pooch adamantly refused to go ‘Cougar-stalking, seriously Jay, you go with him and then just _watch_ the little fucker’) was sitting alone at the bar, sipping at some Jack and trying to work up the courage to ask some cute guy that had caught his eye to head to the toilets or out back for something quick that wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows with the commanders on base. But just as Jake got up his nerve – normally, by the fourth shot, but sometimes by the fifth – Cougar would slide over, murmur something in heavy, husky, _hot_ Spanish that Jake didn’t understand. Far as Jake cared, Cougar might as well be saying ‘ _I’m taking your hard-drunk courage and scattering it to the winds so you have to spend another four glasses working up your nerve_.’ Because that’s what inevitably happened. Jake would stare at Cougar glassily as Cougar took another shot of tequila, winked at Jake, and then sauntered off.

Of course, that’s when Jake was working himself up to approach someone. When someone approached _Jake_ …

Jake, being part animal, could tell almost immediately when someone was watching him. It was innate, in a way, and it helped that his horse took time to scent and categorize every person nearby. So Jake had an idea when someone was about to move towards him. Half the time, he’d look up to see some random girl (who probably was feeling sorry for the Sex God’s friend who was all by his lonesome) looking back at him. He’d smile; she’d return it. Then she’d get up, holding her drink, taking a step in Jake’s direction –

And then Cougar was there. Jake had given up on figuring out how Cougar knew these things were going to happen and got himself into position at exactly the right moment for exactly the wrong reason, but Cougar was _there_. Murmuring to the girl in Spanish – or, hell, he might even be talking in English for all Jake knew, and Cougar just didn’t like talking to Jake and so he only used Spanish with Jake – Cougar would tilt his head sideways, smile that charming, infuriating grin. And just like that, the girl was one of the gaggle that circled Cougar and watched his every move and sighed and laughed too loudly and just generally pissed Jake off.

Because he could get that Cougar was a walking Sex God and every female in the room who had a pulse recognized it. He could also get that Cougar, more often than not, left Jake hanging as he went to some girl’s apartment (or just a hotel room) with a girl, or two, or five. That wasn’t what pissed Jake off. What pissed Jake off was that he managed to snag every attractive girl in the room, and when Jake tried to make the move on a guy? Or a guy tried to make a move on Jake?

Then, Cougar wasn’t _there_ , between the guy and Jake. Then, Cougar was against _Jake_ , overheated warmth and smooth caramel skin and smoky bedroom voice and sinful eyes and a wicked expression, and either the guy spooked and veered elsewhere or Jake lost his nerve, so caught up in Cougar, and had to try and work himself up again. By the time he had, Jake had drunk too much and couldn’t walk straight, let alone see straight to be hitting on _anyone_ , really.

Jake, however, was too much of a wuss to bring this to Cougar’s attention, let alone anyone else’s. Instead, he held his tongue and resented the hell out of Cougar when he was drunk, and stuck with his right hand and (very, very, _very_ rarely) a cute soldier who was stationed on base some of the time Jake was. Or, if he was lucky and managed to bow out of joining Cougar at the bar, he could slip into one of the clubs farther in town and had about a 73% chance of getting at least a blowjob in the bathrooms.

 _But_. None of that mattered, because the point was, Cougar was normally very, very sexually active. He had a posse of girls swarming him like bees towards a particularly rare flower and he enjoyed their attention immensely. There had been quite a few times that Jake had been hurt (before his time in solitary, though) when Cougar had just made sure Jake was generally okay before disappearing off and coming back in the room smelling of stale sex and tequila.

 _Normally_ , that’s where Cougar would be when they were on base.

But Cougar wasn’t. Instead, Cougar was _here_ , hovering around Jake’s side, and okay, yeah, he could see that Cougar might feel a little guilty that he hadn’t been able to drop the guys who dragged Jake into that barn, but Jake was a fucking special forces soldier and could damn well take care of himself – had proved it, too. He wasn’t some sniveling little weakling who needed to be coddled and looked after. Getting caught in the trap was his own damn fault and he should’ve looked closer at the foliage and been using his horse senses instead of running after Roque blindly like a bull. Or a donkey. Which Cougar called him (he’d figured out what ‘ _el burro_ ’ meant after about the fiftieth time Cougar had used it and it never ceased to piss him off because donkeys were ugly and had ugly voices and Jake was _handsome_ , dammit, a handsome, powerful horse much better than any stinking donkey) incessantly now, and there wasn’t much Jake could do to retaliate.

Not while he was still on his meds, at least. The painkillers they had given him were some really strong stuff. Messed with his thought process.

“ _Tranquilo_.”

Jake blinked, surprised to see Cougar hovering in front of him _again_. See, this was why some people invested in bubbles, bubbles that gave them a certain amount of personal space, because this close he could smell the musk that was Cougar and it really should scare him, it should, because Cougar was a _cougar_ and he was the scariest motherfucking big cat Jake had ever seen and that included the black panther Procedural that had very nearly gutted Jake about six months ago during a training session, and his horse shouldn’t be wanting to whicker and arch its neck proudly at Cougar at all, even if Cougar could make some awesome leaps off of Jake’s back—

“Time for your medicine, I think,” Cougar muttered, stepping back.

Jake was belatedly aware that he was talking, mostly to himself, babbling some shit that probably was annoying Cougar to death, but really, Cougar deserved it because he wasn’t acting _right_. He was making it difficult for Jake to smother his crush back into the recesses of his mind and was instead bringing it up at every turn he could. Why couldn’t he just go out and get laid like he did every time they had time between missions and leave Jake here to wallow in his misery and watch Episodes IV, V, and VI in a never-ending loop on the TV?

And suddenly Cougar was there again, right by his side, eyes narrowed in something that was almost close to worry, really, and Jake stared blankly at him until he realized Cougar was holding some small pills. Jake made a face.

“I don’t think I need those, Cougar, because really, I can’t feel anything at all and that might be part of the problem, you know, because if you can’t feel anything how do you know if there’s a fire in the house?”

Cougar had started to lean back, but a line appeared on his forehead and he stared at Jake a minute. “ _Que_?” he asked.

“I mean, you have to touch the doorknob to know, and would you like to be burned alive because you couldn’t tell that the doorknob was hot by touching it? I wouldn’t.”

Cougar looked confused, and muttered to himself under his breath in Spanish before getting up and walking away.

Jake picked at the couch with his left hand, sighing a little. It wouldn’t be so bad, it really wouldn’t, if Cougar was in any way interested in Jake. As it was, the meds were giving him weird dreams that featured Cougar quite often and while he never minded such dreams, Cougar _did_ share the room with him and Jake had no idea if he spoke loud enough for his roommate to hear him. At the very least, his arousal was evident to the other man on the team whose nose was just as good if not better than Jake’s own.

Something was shoved under Jake’s nose, and Jake blinked open his eyes that had so totally fallen closed without his permission. Cougar was sitting there, a cup of water in his hand, a solemn look on his face.

“You don’t have to baby me, you know,” Jake said conversationally, even as Cougar began to tilt the cup and Jake had to pick between swallowing or drowning. When Cougar finally stopped pouring liquid down Jake’s throat, Jake continued, “I am a special forces operative now. Have been a while. Was damn hard, too, you know? No one really likes a mouthy bastard to slip into the special forces. I mean, how many times has Clay practically strangled me? In fact, you’ve stopped him a few times. So has Pooch, come to think about it. And Clay’s had to stop Roque from strangling me…”

Cougar muttered under his breath again, then glanced around. They were still in their room, even though Jake had tried to convince Cougar to move him downstairs in front of the TV. Jake looked around, staring at the mess he’d made of the room before Cougar had come in and bundled him up onto the bed and made it clear Jake wasn’t to leave the bed for any reason for a while. Before Cougar had come in, though, he’d been on the ground, tongue between his teeth as he’d tried to use his left hand to fill in the Sudoku puzzle from the newspaper that was spread all over the room. Some pieces of newspaper were folded haphazardly, others had holes for masks and still others had letters torn out and then rearranged on another piece of paper to spell out coding instructions.

Considering that he’d not had his right hand to work with, it really wasn’t that bad at all.

But Cougar was obviously looking around for something else, and when he found it, he pulled it over to Jake and tucked it close, pulling away the thin sheet he had used to pin Jake’s good hand still earlier.

It was Jake’s blanket, all soft and brown and fluffy and smelling of his sister and his niece even though their scents were so faint that they were almost nonexistent – but he knew what they smelled like, and they had sent him this blanket, and that made this blanket special. Instinctively, he curled tighter around the blanket, and then strong gun-callused hands were lowering him carefully down – mindful of his right hand, but Jake was pretty sure Cougar had crushed his meds and put them in that water because the faint ache that had started to come back into his realm of consciousness was slowly receding. Not that Jake was happy to be drugged – he meant it, when he said the drugs made it so he couldn’t feel anything and made it difficult to cope – but from what he understood his fingers were the least of his problems, even if they were the only visibly damaged parts of his body at the moment. In any case, Jake could feel his eyes fluttering closed as Cougar pulled the soft fuzzy blanket closer –

And then Cougar kissed Jake’s cheek.

Which was _totally_ unfair, because how was Jake supposed to respond, drugged to the gills and not sure if Cougar was being – Jake wasn’t sure – maybe brotherly? Maybe fatherly? But no, Cougar was younger than Jake, so not fatherly, but then again the team as a whole seemed to act as if Jake needed a constant babysitter – so maybe fatherly? Or maybe brotherly, as they shared a room and shared a sense of humor (or, at least, Jake thought they did, as what Jake did sometimes made Cougar smile, if not laugh outright).

Or maybe it wasn’t fatherly or brotherly at all. Maybe it was more… lover-ly. Or hopeful-lover-ly.

Only, the drug took Jake away before Jake could wrap his mouth around the words well enough to ask.

***

“So, Pooch, I have a question.”

“Ah, shit.”

Jake wasn’t insulted when Pooch didn’t slide out from under their car immediately. After all, no one _ever_ wanted to answer Jake’s questions, even when they were relatively simple and straightforward ones. Instead, he decided to plunge ahead and just ask. “Say you have this friend, hypothetically, and he’s always watching you. And he’s getting in your personal space. And he’s just generally making himself very hard to ignore or dismiss or anything, quite unfairly I might add, because – hypothetically speaking of course – this friend is already more than enough on your mind and he doesn’t need to be taking over the few times you’re _not_ thinking about him.”

“Is there a point in any of this?”

“Well, what does it mean?” Jake huffed noisily, perching on the workbench and swinging a leg idly as he watched Pooch grope around for some instrument or another.

There was a clang, and then Pooch twisted around enough to poke part of his head out and stare at Jake. “What does it _mean_?” he echoed.

Jake propped his chin on his hand, returning the stare. He knew what it most likely meant. He wanted to know if everyone _else_ felt that way, because Jake was socially awkward to the extreme and he wasn’t about to jeopardize his friendship with Cougar because he misunderstood a situation grossly.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re asking me what it _means_?"

Jake nodded blithely. “Yep, that I am!”                                

Grumbling under his breath, something about idiot donkeys, Pooch slithered back under the car.

“Hey, I resent the donkey remark, okay?” Jake called out, reaching out to waggle his finger at Pooch until the cast reminded him why that would be a bad idea. “I’m a horse. Horses are _way_ cooler than donkeys. And we’re more loyal. And we’re handsome. Have you ever seen a handsome donkey? No you have not.”

“Shouldn’t you be in the house, Jensen?” Pooch groaned from underneath the car.

Jake grinned, a little maniacally, scaring a bunch of cherries walking by. “Nope. Managed to convince Clay that if I stayed any longer inside I’d take to painting the walls. With unicorns and butterflies, ‘cause Jenna’s into shit like that and I must have, like, a million little paintings to model my masterpiece after. He told me to take a walk but not overdo it. Cougar’s gonna have kittens when he finds out Clay let me outside.” Unconcerned, he swung his leg again, letting the initial momentum slow gradually. “So? What does it mean?”

Another heavy sigh from underneath the carriage of the car. “Okay, Jensen, I’ll play. If someone watches you closely and gets in your personal space, it’s because they want to become personal with you.”

Jake’s horse wanted to rear back and whinny with joy, but his calmer, rational side held it in check. “Okay, well, it could just be that they’re teasing, or that they just want to see how far they can push you, especially when they have a certain reputation –”

“Bad as a fucking teenager, I swear, we might as well just have signed one on and at least then there’d be some _reason_ for all this shit!” Pooch snarled from under the car before crawling completely out and standing up to move into Jake’s personal space. There was a smear of grease under his left eye and his forearms were streaked with it. “Look, I don’t really want to know, but if you do? I suspect you start watching your ‘hypothetical’ _friend_ closely. Got it?”

Jake thought it over. Yeah, he could do some recon, some legwork, make sure he got all his facts right before confronting Cougar and demanding an explanation and perhaps even a kiss…

“So now you stop bothering _me_ , you got _that_?” Pooch growled.

With a wide, disturbing grin, Jake nodded. “Got that, boss! I’ll see you around.”

And thus began Jake’s secret operation to find out as much as he could about Cougar and Cougar’s motivations through a mild form of stalking.

Okay, major form of stalking. But who cared about the semantics?

***

Jake was somewhat irritated to realize his great plan to stalk Cougar in order to understand the Mexican would have to be, for the most part, put on hold. Cougar had indeed flipped out on Clay when he found out Clay had let Jake go walking around outside, and Jake felt he’d have been able to better defend his actions if he hadn’t been so drop-dead tired by the time he came back after wandering around the base for no particular reason other than he was tired of being cooped up in the house. But he _had_ been tired, and Cougar had flipped, and now he was pretty much stuck on his bed in a room without being able to complete his secret mission.

Of course, Cougar was _here_ with him more often than not. Maybe he could get some close-up observations. Such as—

Cougar was meticulously neat. Not that that was a surprise, really – snipers by definition needed to keep everything tight and in working order. No, that wasn’t a surprise, but it meant that there were long stretches of time where Cougar would really be focused enough on his guns that it could take hours for Cougar to clean just one. He cleaned _everywhere_ and _everything_ and it made Jake nervous and jumpy as hell just watching Cougar focus on one gun for more than ten or fifteen minutes (which had nothing to do with the image of Cougar’s fingers sliding over the pieces competently, shining with oil… at least, not that _much_ to do with it).

That neatness carried into his personal life – bunk was always made, clothes and luggage unpacked or packed with efficiency and competency, and Cougar was always neatly groomed. Really, the only things super battered about Cougar were that hat (Jake swore he’d find Cougar a decent replacement, if only because that thing must’ve been on his head since high school, it was so worn out) and Cougar’s boots. Everything else was clean, free of stains, and pretty much all one style.

The neatness manifested in one other major way – control. Cougar was one of the most tightly controlled Procedurals Jake had ever met, and for a predator that was saying something. The scent of fresh blood didn’t draw a rumbling out of his stomach and a man fleeing from him would either be left alone or get a shot between his shoulder blades – not a cougar running down fleeing prey. Cougar in his cat form was a scary motherfucker, but he knew friend from foe and used his animal form to further his human’s goals, not the other way around.

Cougar was also a flirt. Jake had known, from the many (many) times he’d gone with Cougar to a bar, that girls flocked to Cougar like bees to a particularly rare flower, but now Jake was beginning to believe that that just may be how Cougar was naturally, because Cougar would run his hands over the barrel of his rifle, but his eyes would be boring into Jake’s, or Cougar would be eating peanut butter with his finger and lick it clean while staring at Jake.

It was making Jake pretty uncomfortable, in the short run.

Cougar was also smart, and enjoyed reading, even though he tried to sell himself short or at least give off the impression that he wasn’t too keen on the academics. Jake wasn’t exactly sure why – okay, well, acting like you were smart around the average soldier was a good way to be labeled snooty and aloof, which Jake had found out pretty quickly even if it was too late to correct that perception and besides, he really didn’t have a brain-to-mouth filter, it was impossible – but he would sometimes shoot awake from a dream and see that Cougar had his small lamp by his bed on and a thick book held in his hands.

Cougar also looked at Jake, a bit more than necessary. This, Jake had found out by careful study of timings. For about three days straight, he carried a stopwatch and a little notepad, and when he would walk into a room Cougar was sitting in he’d start the timer and then scribble down the time at which Cougar looked at Jake, then when Cougar finally looked away from Jake, and then when Cougar looked back at Jake again. If someone came into the room, or someone else already was in the room, Jake would dutifully record the time when Cougar looked at them and for how long before his eyes darted away.

When adding up all the totals from his random observations, it was clear that Jake held at least seventy-percent dominance over all other team members when they were in proximity to Cougar.

All this was leading up to one inevitable conclusion: Cougar liked Jake.

Now the difficult part came in. Liked Jake how? As a potential partner? As a bed-warmer? As a friend who was just overly concerned, physical, and gentle with Jake? And what was Jake supposed to do with this knowledge? Confront Cougar? Leave it alone? Wait for Cougar to make a move?

If Jake did make the move first, how should he play it off? Romantic dinner, or a casual one? What if Jake came up to Cougar and was rebuffed, for whatever reason? But what if Jake _wasn’t_?How long would this last, then? After all, Cougar was a bad-ass sniper while techs were a dime a dozen (okay, _good_ techs weren’t, but there would always be that worry that some glorified IT guy would fit better because he didn’t smart-mouth Roque or piss Clay off or – or something). What if Cougar was moved to another team or – more likely – Jake would get sent away?

Jake was sitting on his bed, a legal pad leaning against his knee. His hand was healed, of course, as it was four weeks down the line since Cougar had started getting really up-close-and-personal, but it still acted up every now and then as all old breaks tended to do in Jake’s body, especially in the wet. Nevertheless, his hand was healed and he gripped the pen tightly between his fingers, willing them to remember the everyday motions that most children could make. His writing might have been a bit more unintelligible than normal, but his hand was gradually relearning the use of a pen – and with this pen and notepad Jake could plot his brilliant plan to seduce and confront Cougar with his feelings. He was outlining and strategizing only to cross through what he wrote and start again. He was midway through the legal pad now, tongue caught between his teeth, ignoring the fact that it was almost three in the morning. He wrote down something else, then with a sigh of disgust, shoved the pad off his knee and leaned back against the wall, letting his head thud lightly against it.

Across the way, Cougar was asleep in his bunk, the sheet pulled up midway Cougar’s chest, one hand tucked underneath Cougar’s head, the other laying against the pillow, fingers curled. Cougar’s head was tilted away from Jake, turned towards the wall, but Jake could still just make out the point of Cougar’s nose and the dark lashes that fanned against the sniper’s cheek.

Yeah, Jake had it bad. Had never lost it, like he had hoped oh so long ago, but apparently only buried it and forgot it existed until Cougar’s damn hovering all of two weeks ago had really made it clear that Cougar might give Jake a chance.

Or, you know. That Cougar was worried about a packmate – Jake – and Jake was deluding himself about what such body language really meant.

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Jake didn’t _know_. His brilliant plans to waylay Cougar or surprise Cougar or, hell, crawl into Cougar’s bed right now (well, maybe not right now, ‘cause of the still healing ribs and all) and wake the other man up with a blowjob – all of them could backfire spectacularly if Cougar simply didn’t feel the same way towards Jake as Jake felt towards Cougar.

In the end, Jake was beginning to realize as he morosely looked at the notepad, Cougar needed to make the first move. Which meant Jake needed to make it clear he was waiting for Cougar to make the first move. So Jake needed to find some way to either make Cougar jealous, or for Cougar to see him do something intimate, or for Jake to seduce Cougar in a way that was ‘unconsciously’-conscious.

Making Cougar jealous would be the easiest, really – or, theoretically would be the easiest, considering that Cougar saw Jake in various forms of undress daily and Jake couldn’t come up with ‘intimate’ things beyond nudity without risking revealing too much and Jake’s seductions, while they worked for his purposes, had never really landed him more than a one-nighter and that was decidedly _not_ what he wanted with Cougar. So. Operation: Make Cougar Jealous needed to be implemented. The problem with that, though, was that whenever people in bars decided Jake looked okay enough to try for, Cougar somehow intervened, and that was the end of that. Jake would have to do something else if it was going to work that way.

Like… hire a friend to act interested in him?

Jake narrowed his eyes speculatively. That wasn’t all that bad of an idea at all, actually.

***

“This is a horrible idea.”

“Oh, come on. You know it’s an act and _I_ know it’s an act.”

“ _He_ won’t know it’s an act, and if it’s true that he really likes you, I’ll be in deep shit. Like, watch-my-back kinda shit, because he’s a goddamn _sniper_.”

Jake smiled weakly at his semi-friend, semi-rival (at least, when it came to arcade games). “Well, he’s very controlled. Most likely he won’t do a thing to you, you know?”

Bryan looked at him through narrowed eyes. Bryan ran an arcade in the small town that was set just outside the base – it was a place the younger soldiers normally came in to fool around and eat pizza and sometimes watch the game, when it was on. Jake had discovered it at a young age, when Bryan had been just the son of the boss, the older kid standing behind the counter. Now, Bryan had grown up and filled out, and while he wasn’t battle-hardened like his clientele he could normally kick out too-rowdy cherries who still were figuring out that the tags didn’t equal obedience from the place’s owner. But there were other things about Bryan right now that Jake was more interested in, such as the fact that Bryan was completely straight and wouldn’t fall for Cougar’s magic powers, that Bryan wouldn’t allow Cougar to deter him from ‘flirting’ with Jake because he was in on the plan in the first place, and that Bryan had never stepped foot in Wild Dog before and no one would know him there.

If, of course, Bryan agreed. Which it was looking like he wouldn’t.

Jake let out a heavy sigh when Bryan did nothing more than glower at him from blue eyes. “It might turn out that he really doesn’t care, or that he just does it to piss me off, so you ignoring his interference wouldn’t really matter to him at all.”

“You don’t believe that. You wouldn’t have come up with this plan if you thought it might not work.”

Jake winced. “Okay, yeah, true, but he’s really a controlled guy, Bryan, and I don’t think he’d be able to track you down, you know? You never go around the places he normally goes and you pretty much stay out of everyone’s way. And as long as I don’t go back to the house smelling of sex and you all tangled up, I’m pretty sure he’ll know that nothing happened, even if he won’t be happy that it happened. He’ll be more pissed at me, you know?”

“Or pissed at the guy that’s messing with his little bro. Or – whatever.” Bryan folded his arms and leaned back in his office chair, long black hair falling into his eyes that he shoved at irritably. Dark brown skin of Native American origin was lightened to the color of creamy coffee because of his mother’s origin, but his father was clear in the large build, square features, and stone-cold stare he could pull off at less than a moment’s notice. “I don’t see why you just can’t ask this guy. Where’s that infamous Jake Jensen courage and lack of common sense that got you disciplined every other day?”

Jake trailed his finger over the arm of the chair and tried to find a good answer.

“Oh god.”

Blinking, Jake looked up. “What?”

Bryan was staring at him with some kind of mixture of horrified fascination and pity. “You are head over heels for this guy, aren’t you?”

Jake winced.

“ _Dammit_ , Jake…” Bryan let out an explosive sigh and ran a hand through his hair, messing it adorably (not that Jake would ever tell Bryan that he found him adorable, as Bryan would be pissed and not speak to him and be awkward with him when he finally managed to get past it). “Why him?”

Jake shrugged, a little shamefacedly. “If it was easy to just tell myself to stop, I would have already,” he offered. “I mean… I thought I had gotten it out of my system but after I busted up my hand and he kinda hovered over me like a – I dunno, a hen or a mom – ” _or a lover_ “ – or something, it’s just… there might be hope, you know? And now I’m finding out that I never lost that feeling, just ignored it. So.” He sighed a little. “My pathetic story, I suppose.”

Bryan massaged the bridge of his nose. “I’m a fucking idiot,” he muttered under his breath, and then shot Jake an aggrieved look. “Alright, I’ll do it, but if anything happens to me, so help me god I am going to find you and take it out of your hide three times over, we clear?”

“Absolutely!” Jake gushed.

***

So, the plan was in place. Jake felt like he should rub his hands together like an evil mastermind, only that would give it away and he was already practically dancing with nervous energy to the point that Pooch (who was along with him and Cougar on this outing tonight, and who Jake hoped would keep Cougar from killing either Bryan or Jake himself if things went wrong) threatened to shoot his ass full of lead to keep him from wiggling like that. Cougar just smirked at Jake, and Jake tried not to melt because of it.

The Wild Dog was a harder kind of bar, the one where fluttering girls rarely went and it was heavily male-dominated, with a handful of hard-eyed, luscious-bodied women who were, most often, by-they-hour entertainers – or, on the other hand, fellow soldiers who took no shit from anyone. Of course, there were a few other women who didn’t have that jaded look in their eye, though they were just as rough as the men, it seemed, and had no problem with the loud noise and the pool tables that were always occupied and the scarcity of drinks that weren’t hard whisky, tequila, or beer.

Even with all that, Cougar managed to have two man-eating ladies looking like they were willing to drop their underwear right then and there for him, if he asked. Jake let out a sigh and he stared a bit morosely into his drink as Cougar sauntered over to the pool tables with his two admirers.

“Why aren’t you over there?” Pooch asked as he took his first sip of his beer.

Jake looked up. “Huh?”

“Playing a game. With _Cougar_.” Pooch quirked an eyebrow and took another swallow.

Jake wasn’t quite sure where to go with this. He wasn’t supposed to tell, he knew that much, but did it matter if he didn’t straight out tell and someone _knew_? “What… do you mean?” he finally asked.

“I mean, you’re so gung ho about a lot of things, and now you’re just sitting back and staring daggers at those two – ladies.” Pooch hitched one shoulder up. “I’d think you’d be the one to take the bull by the horns, or something.”

“A bull is one thing,” Jake muttered. “A cougar by the tail is something else completely.”

Bryan was already in the bar, of course – Jake had asked that he get there a bit earlier, so it wouldn’t look strange that a new guy walks in and makes a beeline towards Jake. But now Jake wasn’t so sure. Why did Pooch think Jake should be the one to walk up to Cougar? Unless Cougar had been saying pretty loudly that he wanted to get together and Jake has just been oblivious to the point where he was about to make a mistake and get Bryan killed…

Pooch sighed and looked around at the other people in the bar. “I’m just saying, you’ll know for certain if you ask. Hell, Clay’s made it clear that Cougar’s good for keeping you alive and together. And Clay’s not one to interfere unless you screw up a mission or something because of it. And I couldn’t care less, really, so long as I don’t have to hear it, anymore than I don’t have to hear Clay bang some new psycho bitch that tries to set the house on fire…”

Ah, Jake remembered Alyssa. Captain Alyssa, actually, and thank everything in the heavens and earth that she’d been transferred to another base. And yeah, that had been an awkward night.

“Roque –”

Pooch cut Jake off before Jake could continue. “Roque might not like it, but he won’t interfere, either, though he’ll crack jokes and poke fun and generally make your lives a verbal hell. He hates the idea, but he knows better than to mess it up if you guys can make it work. But he, more than Clay, will be looking for signs that it’s _not_ working.”

With an indignant glare, Jake asked hotly, “Did – does everyone know that Cougar – that I – that I wouldn’t be averse to that? Or did they see that Cougar wasn’t – averse – to me?”

For a moment, Jake was afraid he’d been too blunt, as Pooch ran his finger over the condensation on his bottle. But then, Pooch let out a sigh. “Actually, who the hell knows what Cougar’s – whether Cougar’s averse or not? But since you hurt your hand… _I_ know there’s something, even if I don’t know what the hell it is, and Clay seemed to know that Cougar was at least protective of you, more so than he was of the rest of us, though that might just be because you’re so accident prone…”

“The thing is – I don’t want to screw things up, okay?”

Pooch let out a long sigh and scratched the back of his neck. Jake could scent his discomfort with the topic, but hell, Pooch had brought it up first and Jake was going to say his piece whether Pooch liked it or not.

“I mean – I don’t want to assume, like, that Cougar – isn’t – averse to me. So I wanted to make sure.”

While Jake had been talking, Pooch’s head had been down, as if he was trying to block out everything through sheer force of will, but at Jake’s tone his head came up and if he was a _real_ dog his ears would have been pricked forward and his lip curled in a wary snarl. “What did you do?” Pooch asked, voice low and dangerous.

“Ah, well… I didn’t _do_ anything, per se. I’m conducting an experiment!” Jake smiled widely, innocently, trying to alleviate Pooch’s apparent worry.

It didn’t seem to be working all that well.

“ _Jensen_.”

Jake sighed. “You know how Cougar always intercepts everyone who tries to come and talk to me when I’m out with him?”

For a minute, Pooch just stared at him blankly. “He does?” he asked.

“ _Yes_ , Pooch. Every single person. In fact –” Jake dug into his back pocket and pulled out a tiny flipbook where he had dates and descriptions inscribed down in his chicken scratch writing. “I have, right here, a list of the people he intercepted from coming towards me for the past… gah… let’s see. August, September, October… six months! Six months’ worth of interceptions worthy of a football field, all documented right here!”

Pooch blinked at Jake. “You have too much time on your hands.”

“ _Exactly_!” Jake crowed, pointing his tiny pencil at Pooch’s nose. “I haven’t gotten laid in so long –”

“ _Don’t_ wanna hear it!” Pooch yelped.

Jake smiled smugly at Pooch. “In any case, I just want to know what happens if Cougar tries to intercept someone – and they don’t take his hint, or fall into his little posse that follows him around like bitches in heat.”

Pooch groaned. “Well, don’t include me in your madness, alright, Jensen? Just – just keep it from me, and –”

“Too late!” Jake said happily, when Bryan stood up from the corner and began to make his way over towards where Jake and Pooch were sitting.

It was when Bryan was three-fourths of the way over that Cougar was suddenly back at their table, tipping his hat at Pooch and then leaning close to Jake as he murmured under his breath in Spanish before taking Jake’s cup and swaggering away from Jake. Like always, goosebumps rippled up Jake’s arms and back, and he stared dazedly after Cougar, even as Cougar moved towards Bryan and stopped before him, obviously murmuring something. Bryan’s eyes traveled over to Jake before sliding back to Cougar and he hitched a shoulder casually, saying something in response – too much noise for Jake to hear what was going on, even when they were that close (which was why he felt comfortable discussing his brilliant plan with Pooch, since Cougar was all the way over by the pool tables) – before continuing on his way over to Jake’s and Pooch’s table.

For an instant, when Bryan moved past Cougar, Jake saw something akin to… what? Jealousy? Rage? Irritation that he got brushed off so easily? Something else that Jake couldn’t make out because it was too smoky and dimly lit to make anything out clearly? Whatever it was, it flashed across Cougar’s face before his impenetrable mask was back in place, and he was moving over towards the pool tables once again.

Bryan made it over and sat down beside Jake – close, almost so that leg touched leg and arm touched arm. “So, now what?” he asked, looking highly uncomfortable.

Jake smiled widely at him, even as his eyes shot over to Cougar – and yes, he was looking. “Now, we act like two old friends – which we are – that are just a bit more touchy feely than most.”

“And that’s it?” Bryan asked, before turning to look at Pooch who was looking at them with some kind of horrified fascination. “Who’s this?”

“Ah. Pooch, meant Bryan, Bryan, Pooch. Bryan’s an old friend. Married?”

Bryan shook his head, though he looked a bit proud to correct Jake with, “No, but engaged. We’re getting married in a month, actually.”

Jake grinned, then turned to look back at Pooch’s expression, which hadn’t relaxed at all. “Seriously, though, we’re good friends. And Bryan’s pretty uneasy with guys like me but he’s doing this as a favor as long as I keep Cougar from killing him eventually.”

“You think you’re gonna be able to do that?” Pooch croaked.

Bryan frowned, and Jake hastened to assure him, “Of course! Cougar doesn’t know him, after all.” With a bigger, wider smile, Jake patted Bryan’s shoulder and said easily, “Bryan’s my biggest online rival at the moment, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say biggest,” Bryan murmured, and Jake was glad to see him start to relax into the familiar world of video games.

Jake winked at Bryan. “When I play Call of Duty it drives me nuts sometimes, because Bryan’s got just as devious a mind as I do when it comes right down to it.”

“You just suck in general, what can I say?” Bryan snickered, nudging Jake in the ribs with an elbow.

Almost as if by magic, Cougar was suddenly at their table – a rarity, to say the least, since Cougar normally remained _far_ away from their table unless they had ordered food or were on a strict ‘boy’s night out only’ outing. Jake and Pooch both blinked as Cougar dipped his head in greeting and then looked at Jake. “Would you like to play pool, _mi amigo_?”

Jake had to quite honestly say he’d never been invited to play a game before, not when it wasn’t just ‘the boys’ out having fun. “Uh… sure, why not? You want to, Bryan?”

Cougar’s eyes focused in on Bryan with laser-like intensity. Jake could read the almost hostile question in his eyes.

“Cougar, this is Bryan – Bryan, Cougar, my roommate. Cougar, Bryan’s one of my online gaming friends, though we’ve hung out together before.” Jake smiled easily, even though there was a definite thundercloud on Cougar’s face.

Bryan looked over at Cougar, then back at Jake. There was a definite look of panic in his eyes, one that Cougar could probably read even though Bryan’s face was stoic and he kept himself calm. Still, his scent did not hide the fact that he was worried. Jake fought not to wince visibly – Cougar would pick up on something like that.

Cougar moved back from the table, eyes on Jake, and Jake found himself catching his breath a little before nodding. “Okay, then, c’mon, Bryan,” he said more cheerfully than he felt. God, Cougar was going to eviscerate him and cut him into tiny pieces. And then stomp him into the ground. And _then_ stuff him in a blender. And then…

Jake had never played pool before, and he stared at the green table with a look of intense concentration as Cougar went first. It was obvious that Cougar had a lot of skill – probably more than he was showing, if Jake was going to be honest, but it was nice of Cougar to miss a pocket and let Jake take a turn. Bryan leaned against the wall behind the both of them and watched quietly as Jake missed his first pocket and Cougar proceeded to sink the next four.

Jake didn’t like being bested all that much, and he frowned fiercely at the table before leaning down close and eyeing all the angles. It was a game of math, he understood that, and angles, which he wasn’t all that great on but he was certain he could figure it out. How hard could it be?

When he finally managed to sink one ball in, he reared back, smug and happy, and shot a look over at Cougar, who was watching him with… something close to an amused gentleness on his face. It caught Jake, held him still and captive in that gaze, because there was more in those eyes than Jake could ever remember there being before.

Bryan cleared his throat behind the both of them, and Jake whipped around almost guiltily. Okay, yeah, he wasn’t actually Bryan’s date, but still, it was rude of him to just forget that he was there.

“I think I should head back over there with – Pooch, was it?”

“No, no, I’m sorry Bryan – do you want a turn?” Jake asked, desperate not to have Bryan leave him here, because he was going to make an idiot out of himself if it was just him and Cougar and this weird tension between the two of them.

Cougar was suddenly there, practically between them and snagging Jake’s attention. “Rude of you to keep your _amigo_ standing,” Cougar murmured.

Jake opened his mouth to argue, but Bryan tilted his head. “He’s got a point, Jake. I’ll be over there, if you need me.” His eyes very clearly said he didn’t think Jake needed him any more at all.

But Jake _did_. Bryan just didn’t get it.

“Ah – o-okay, Bryan, Pooch is over there so you won’t be alone and I guess it’ll be just you and me, huh Cougs, and we’ll figure this game out – or, I will, eventually, and you won’t ‘cause I know you got this game down already and you’re just throwing me pity shots so I don’t feel like a complete idiot ‘cause you’re a fucking sniper, of course you could get these shots in, got to be _way_ easier than shooting with a bullet –”

“ _Tranquilo_ , Jensen,” Cougar murmured.

His words had the effect of cutting Jake completely off, and Jake just stood there, uncertain but having nothing more to say, and so he licked his lips nervously before watching as Cougar stepped up to the table and reset the game.

That goaded Jake, and he stepped forward. “Hey, I had managed to sink one of those, I’ll have you know!”

Cougar looked up from the table, hat tilted and an amused smirk pulling up one corner of his mouth. Jake was lost.

Without saying a word, Cougar came behind Jake and with gentle and firm touches arranged Jake’s body to be in the best position before leaning down and showing – again, without words, because Cougar was just fucking awesome like that – Jake how to play pool.

The third pitcher of beer was halfway done and he was completely sloshed when Cougar finally tugged the stick out of his hands and guided him out the door. He was talking a mile a minute, he knew it – most likely about angles, because they were in his head, the perfect 180 degrees straight-shot, the tricky 38 degrees rebounder, the different degrees that meant different things at different times. Cougar was helping him stand, but Jake _was_ pretty good at standing all by himself, thank you very much, and he told the guards on base that as Cougar presented their IDs to the two of them and dragged a floating Jake onto the base and into their house.

Jake didn’t know what time it was, but it was pitch dark, and he could hear Roque’s snores from the room and Clay’s door was open, his bed empty, which meant that Clay was out with someone that they’d have to save him from again, and the last girl really had been a bitch, threatening to cut off Pooch’s fingers one by one if Clay didn’t agree to marry her. How she’d gotten the drop on Pooch, no one really knew, and he was too embarrassed to say anything, so Jake came up with wild conjectures on the off-chance that he hit upon the right one. More likely, though, Pooch would get fed up with the outlandish stories and explain.

Or, at least, Jake hoped he would. Because quite frankly his brain was too blurry right now to deal with wild conjectures.

“I doubt that, _mi amigo_.”

Jake would have blushed at confirmation that his thoughts were not staying safely in his head like he thought they were, but he was too occupied with another thought, one that made him sigh. When Cougar made a questioning noise, Jake looked up a little at Cougar and remarked softly, “You didn’t like Bryan.”

Cougar had been in the process of lowering Jake onto Jake’s cot, and apparently this statement was enough of a surprise to Cougar that he dropped Jake the rest of the way. Jake yelped a little, reaching up to grab his throbbing head and fight back nausea at the same time as the beer made it clear that it wasn’t going to stay down where it belonged much longer. In fact, Jake’s rumbling stomach and aching head made him almost miss Cougar’s soft “ _Que_?”

But he didn’t miss it, so he did his best to look up at Cougar without physically moving his head too much. “You don’t like my friend.” And then it seemed like Jake couldn’t stop talking, even as he was horrified with what spilled out of his mouth next: “You don’t like me having any friends at all. You try to keep me away from everyone because you don’t like me.”

“ _Que?!_ ” Cougar repeated, this time indignantly.

Jake was on a roll now – unfortunately. Words spilled out too fast, so fast, and he couldn’t keep them from coming. “You watch me, you stalk me, but you never do anything and instead you go around with those tramps in the bars and yet when I get a chance to have something good you ruin it all the time, and I never thought I pissed you off that badly because I _always_ leave chocolate and cinnamon cookies in your vest jacket when we’re on missions and no one else does that, I think of it, because I want you to be happy only you never seem to be, only when you’re talking with Pooch ‘cause you’ll smile at Pooch but you’ll only smirk at me, like here’s the idiot white-boy donkey again, let’s poke fun at him some more, and I don’t get why because I haven’t _done_ anything to you and it drives me crazy that you hate me –”

Cougar’s lips descended on his own.

Jake would love to say that it was a moment that he’d remember for the rest of his life. He’d like to say that Cougar was as thrilled by Jake as Jake was of Cougar. He’d _love_ to say that it was perfect, soft lips and smooth tongues.

Instead, it was rough lips and coarse bristles against Jake’s chin and cheeks, that brim hitting against Jake’s forehead, Jake’s glasses twisting on his face, Cougar’s breath heavy with alcohol and Jake was certain his was just as thick with it, the scent of the bar and of smoke and of the night and of the _wild_ all around Jake. It was a surprise to Jake, and he squeaked halfway through, eyes flying open in confusion and nearly knocked Cougar over when he pushed away. Cougar stumbled heavily and cursed under his breath.

“You kissed me!” Jake had meant for that to be a yell, really he did, but it came out a soft whisper, thick and husky and bewildered.

“ _Perdoname_ ,” Cougar breathed, voice rough and harsh.

Jake stared at him, the dark of the room making Cougar into a darker shadow amongst shadows, with the moon low in the sky as it was so late at night, the dying rays touching off the outline of Cougar’s amazing body – now tight, with what Jake wasn’t certain, but Jake was too inebriated and in shock to realize anything right now. “You kissed me,” he repeated, voice gentle with wonder.

Cougar took a step away, but Jake reached out awkwardly, nearly falling off the bed as his coordination wasn’t exactly all that great at the moment. “A-again?” he asked, voice so light, so hushed, that it was almost nonexistent.

 _Almost_.

Cougar froze – he had twisted around immediately to keep Jake from falling out of the bed, and was currently gripping Jake’s upper arms to support him even though Cougar was the slighter male and really, Jake shouldn’t be expecting Cougar to do this for him, especially with how Jake had acted in the bar and right now and, god, just with how Jake normally acted. “Again?” Cougar repeated, only his voice sounded strangled and Jake wondered if there was something around Cougar’s throat that he didn’t know about. Clumsily lifting his hand up, he ran his fingertips over Cougar’s collarbone and the dip at the neck.

Cougar swallowed against his touch.

And then those rough lips were against Jake’s again.

Jake couldn’t help but moan, melting into the kiss and completely ignoring when Cougar sank down to his knees and pulled Jake the rest of the way out of the bed. They kissed and kissed and Jake was sliding hands over Cougar’s back, under Cougar’s shirt, and then they kissed some more, until Jake was near delirious from all the blood going – well – other places, really – and Cougar was growling possessively in the back of his throat.

Then Jake was on his back, on the ground, Cougar straddling his hips and _ohmyfuckinggodYES_ he and his horse were in complete agreement that this was amazing and it didn’t matter that there was a predator on his chest with piercing eyes and a hungry stare, because Cougar’s cock was hard and rubbing against _Jake’s_ groin in the most delicious way and he couldn’t imagine anything better. Running his hands up Cougar’s sides, Jake twined one hand into Cougar’s long hair, undoing the tie that had kept it back, and curled his other hand around the back of Cougar’s neck, forcing Cougar’s head down to his own. It was heat and warmth and friction _ohgodthefrictionyesyesYES_ and Cougar’s intense eyes glazing as Jake ran fingers through Cougar’s hair and scraped gently at Cougar’s scalp, and then Cougar was growling even louder only it sounded like purring and who the hell knew Jake could get turned on from a fucking cat noise, what even, Jake must be so perverted –

Then Cougar was grinding _down_ and _rough_ and Jake threw his head back ( _ouch, dammit, hard floor and too much beer and nausea do not fucking mix_ ) and his hips bucked up without his approval and then everything whited out.

***

Jake moaned and tried to twist away from the invading sun that stabbed at his eyes – but something was on his chest and with a disgruntled sigh he swept his hand up—

His eyes jolted open – only to fall shut again with a more vehement curse as the sun seared his eyeballs and made them water. But that didn’t matter, as he was grinning fiercely.

Cougar was on his chest.

A shirtless Cougar, at that.

Jake and his horse felt incredibly smug and proud that his plan had worked so well. Okay, so the drinking too much hadn’t really been a part of the plan, just as his current state of being hung-over wasn’t part of the plan, either – but it had worked. Cougar was shirtless and, if Jake wasn’t mistaken, fast asleep on Jake’s chest, his ear pressed against Jake’s heartbeat and one hand curling in Jake’s hand to thread fingers with Jake’s fingers. Jake’s free hand slid back up that broad expanse of back, the fine muscles underneath the beautiful skin that fairly glowed to Jake’s barely open eyes.

From what Jake could remember – as he ran his hand up and down Cougar’s back and lightly scratched his fingernails over Cougar’s scalp and ran his fingers through Cougar’s hair, causing the slighter male to hum sleepily and bury closer into Jake’s chest – they hadn’t actually gotten out of their clothes last night. Mutual friction-handjobs and dirty rutting, yes – an actual fucking?

_Not yet._

But Jake couldn’t wait. As it was, it was clear that Cougar wanted him pretty badly, and there was no way in hell that Jake would say no to that at _all_. Smirking, he took inventory. His head hurt, and he was fighting (successfully, he thought) the urge to throw up. He was shirtless, like Cougar (when the hell did that happen?), but both of them had their pants on. There was a certain stiffness in Jake’s briefs that indicated he’d definitely gotten some kind of pleasure last night. A quick inspection revealed Cougar was in a likewise state. They were on the floor between their two cots, a sheet dragged off the nearest bed (Jake’s) to tangle over their legs.

Cougar let out a rough purr, and his eyes opened to slits. His cowboy hat had fallen off in the rapid confusion of last night’s dry-humping session, but it was within reach of Jake and so he picked it up and placed it rakishly on Cougar’s sleep-mussed head.

“Good morning, lover,” Jake murmured, voice possessive and arrogant and just a tiny bit desperate. “Sleep well?”

Crinkling at the corners of Cougar’s eyes lit up Cougar’s face, made him seem as young as he really was, all of one year younger than Jake, and he leaned forward, groin rubbing against groin (Cougar was straddling Jake’s waist, and Jake had a flash of darkness and moonlight skating over caramel shoulders as Cougar ground down onto him and hello, morning wood), to press a heated kiss against Jake’s lips.

“Slept well,” he whispered against Jake’s lips.

Jake smiled widely. Coming from Cougar, that was a bigger compliment than anything else – like Jake, the sniper suffered from insomnia, though Jake had been led to believe that the insomnia wasn’t a medical condition like Jake suspected his own was. No, Cougar’s was the result of memories and a mission gone bad, and one that Jake wasn’t going to bring up. The fact that Cougar had slept well with a leg on either side of Jake’s waist, head cradled against Jake’s chest, fingers intertwined with Jake’s…

“You guys stay out for last call or – _JESUS CHRIST ON A FUCKING POGO STICK!_ ”

Jake glanced at the partially open door and then back at Cougar, quirking an eyebrow at the sniper. “Well, Pooch is awake, obviously. And I’m gonna puke really soon, so you might wanna…”

Cougar laughed and got up off of Jake.

***

For a blissful three months, there was nothing but missions and sex and Roque glaring at them and then glaring at Clay, needling them when he could, and Pooch laughing his head off and poking fun and yelling his head off when he caught them in the garage going at it, and Clay refusing to comment on it at all except an oblique reference to working well as a team and understanding that the mission couldn’t be screwed up because of personal passions. And sometimes it really _was_ difficult, when they completed a mission and pulled out and realized that Cougar had been pinned down and unable to make it back to the rendezvous and Jake wanted to go back after Cougar but had to stay put and wait, biting his nails and mouth running, like the Energizer bunny, keeping on and on and on until Cougar’s hat appeared on the horizon and Jake practically collapsed in relief.

There were other times, when it wasn’t just sex and missions but Jake fooling around on his computer, because he wasn’t scared of some CIA spook and he’d damned well hack what he wanted to hack and they’d never be able to prove it was him, _never_ , not in a million years. Jake was pretty sure that Cougar knew he was looking more into how that formula had gotten into terrorist hands, and where that formula was created, and _why_ that formula was created. Certainly Clay had an inkling, even if he wasn’t completely positive. But Jake couldn’t find anything definite, couldn’t pin down one person who gave the executive order to give that formula out, even when he sent feelers out to the hacking community. Not that Jake pursued it relentlessly; he was busy, after all, and he had things to do, and he only picked up the project when he was bored and needed something to occupy his hands. Whenever, of course, Cougar wasn’t the one occupying his hands – and other parts of his body.

***

And then there was Bolivia.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Yeah. The really short chapter I'm embarrassed to give you (at least it's 916? I added a few lines to flesh out Pooch's character...). I didn't want to leave you guys on a cliffhanger. :(
> 
> AND AND AND. I HAVE FINISHED MOVIE CANON! 99k+ word count! And I feel very proud that almost every single scene in the movie I incorporated (I skipped pretty much anything that had Max in it, since this is entirely from the POV of the various members of the Losers) is exactly as it was in the movie. Only once scene in the middle of the movie is changed slightly (I left out a prop used) and then the Port of LA starts out mostly the same, and changes only when Aisha joins back up with them. THEN I WILDLY VEER INTO MY AU. (And then come back to the movie to include Pooch and his family, and Jensen and his family. Then back into AU territory.)
> 
> All in all, pre-movie was about 50k words, and there are about 49k words for the full movie, and I'm really hoping that post-movie/wrapping it up won't take much more than 25, 30k, because THIS WASN'T INTENDED TO BE AN EPIC NOVEL MY GOD. I NOW HAVE TO PACK/GET READY BECAUSE I'VE BEEN PUTTING OFF THE MAJORITY OF IT ALL WEEK. (Yes, I am a procrastinator.)

Clay couldn’t stop smelling it.

It was everywhere – on the street, in his clothes, in the pit. Charred flesh. And one teddy bear, torn and burnt.

He was going to fucking kill Max.

He didn’t know what had happened. _Why_ this had happened. Why, when Jensen went online and tried to get a message out, they had been labeled ‘rogue’ and ‘KIA’. He didn’t know what to do anymore. He was – he was no longer a lieutenant colonel, part of the US of A military and proud to be so. He was…

He was damn broke.

The hotel room was actually pretty good, when you considered where they were. Certainly better than he could expect. Jensen and Cougar had found work in a factory, Pooch found work in a garage, and he and Roque…

Well. They drifted.

There wasn’t much they could do otherwise, not really. Clay certainly didn’t have the ability to be sober at any time after three in the afternoon, and Roque seemed perpetually drunk. The rest of the team took pity on him and his captain, paid for their booze and their gambling and their hotel rooms, and how did Clay repay them?

Not a single fucking plan to bring them back into the United States.

It’d been two months already. Two months in Bolivia, and he was starting to think they’d never leave.

“Clay.”

Clay tilted his head in Roque’s direction – they were sitting in front of the pit, watching the cockfight, drinking. Always drinking, now.

_Pathetic_.

“Clay, our damn bird just lost.”

Clay stared blankly at the mass of men yelling and shouting and the noise and confusion. “Always seems to do that, doesn’t it?”

 

~*~*~*~

 

Roque drank because he could.

Killing kids wasn’t his thing. There was no reason for it, and if they could manage to drag the kids free before the bomb hit, that was what they were going to do. Then, walking through the jungle to the heli, he wondered how they were going to fit inside. Kids could squeeze in tighter than adults, but five men in combat gear with all their equipment weren’t going to give a lot of room. When the pilot said simply that there was enough room – barely – for the children, or for them, that wasn’t a tough decision either. The kids needed to be taken somewhere safe. He didn’t disagree with Clay at all with what had gotten them into this mess, didn’t fault Clay for the death of twenty-five kids.

What he faulted Clay for was how he dealt.

Not, of course, that Roque was dealing any better, when it came down to it. But he was looking into the creation of false papers, of a new identity, because the government had already screwed him over – why should he care about clearing his name or killing this faceless guy who might not even be called Max? Hell, he could have just been looking at a volume dial and decided that ‘Min’ sounded too girly for a codename.

Sitting in the pit gave him some type of outlet for his violence. What Clay didn’t know was that Roque regularly went to the even more underground pits and rings, the ones that he got to participate in and beat the living shit out of some idiot who wanted to win money. With the money he was getting doing that, it’d just be enough to buy papers, and then he was getting the hell back into America and getting the hell back to his life. The military wanted to call quits with him?

Then he wanted to call quits with the military.

 

~*~*~*~

 

Someone wanted them dead. The rest of the world _thought_ they were dead.

And to keep them thinking it, and away from his wife –

_– his pregnant wife, oh Jolene, baby, what you must be going through –_

_–_ he couldn’t contact her. Couldn’t get a letter out or a call through or anything, because his wife’s correspondence and telephone line and email accounts and purchases were being watched, because Max – whoever the hell this bastard was – could do anything, everything, to her and Pooch was _here_ , unable to get to her or protect her or do anything for her at all. Jensen could intermittently hack satellites, let Pooch watch her go about her daily business, watch her bump become more prominent, watch her as she spent more and more time in Hartford, Connecticut with Pooch’s ninety-eight year old grandmother. Pooch never knew whether being able to see her go about her routines helped or made the hurt worse.

He swallowed hard and rubbed the heel of his hand against one eye, pressing hard enough to create sparks of pain that shoved back the suspicious prickle of tears.

The garage was a tiny one, and his pay minimal at best, but it _was_ pay and it took care of his hotel room and it meant that he could eat at night and Jensen could rig his laptop to let Pooch watch his home via satellite so… he was coping. Not well ( _a bar fight, Jensen having to pull Pooch out of a pile of bodies and stitching up a three-inch gash in his abdomen – another bar fight, and another, until they blended together and almost every night he woke up with a hangover or worse_ ) and he laughed now to think that he had once been termed ‘the sane Loser’. Without Jolene?

He was just as insane as any of them.

Maybe even more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: changed the label from 'rouge' to 'ROGUE,' thank you lovely Kellanda for catching that, no, they weren't supposed to be labeled the color red. >.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM BACK!
> 
> I had... an interesting camp experience. Let's just say I'm glad to be going back to school and not dealing with fifteen to twenty bratty kids that are so certain your electronics are there for them because they're bored.
> 
> *ahem*
> 
> Word count is sitting at 106+, which should go up over the weekend because I know what's happening, I just haven't had the time to sit down and write it out. I am also fooling around with the most recent chapter format, because it is literally just Jake and Aisha explaining what was happening behind the scenes and it's all necessary but... very slow, action speaking. Heavy on the dialogue.
> 
> Oh well. I'll figure it out soon enough.
> 
> Hope you continue to enjoy!

Jake didn’t know what to do with himself. Or with Cougar. Cougar was dead silent now – not the silence of before, with raised eyebrows and a grin twitching at the corner of his mouth and soft eyes that saw so much and gave so much back in return. No, this silence was dead, those eyes empty, body slumped, beaten and broken down and heart-rending. Jake didn’t know what to do to help.

He and Cougar shared a hotel room. They had two beds, because it was easier to deal with and no one would actually expect them to use both beds.

But both beds were being used.

Cougar had fallen to his knees and just… stared. When the helicopter had been shot down, when those twenty-five bright faces with equally bright futures melted from the heat, flesh liquefying… Cougar had fallen to his knees and not moved.

Jake – Jake hated himself for his reaction. He had frozen, standing still, and on one level he registered the horror, the tragedy. On another level… he was terrified. His horse side never dealt well with fire and now here it was, flickering, flashing, pieces of metal falling from the sky and the clearing burning from the wreckage, and he just wanted to turn tail and _run_.

He hadn’t held still because he had conquered his horse – he had held still because he had been too scared to run.

It had been him and Roque who’d finally got their team moving and away from the wreckage – Roque had taken Clay into hand and Jake had tugged at Pooch enough to get Pooch to follow Roque and Clay. Then Jake had gone over to Cougar, put a hand on Cougar’s back.

Cougar had shuddered, twitching away with a growl, and stood up, stalking off. Jake had been surprised, and more than a little hurt, and ended up trailing behind, the last Loser to leave the clearing and he’d been unable to just _leave_. As much as the destruction, as hot as the flames had been… there were still bodies. Skeletons. And something had to be done.

They’d walked back to the place where their makeshift camp had been before, and Jake and Roque had put up the tents before forcing Clay and Pooch to go wash in the nearby river. Cougar had refused to be herded like cattle and instead had gone with Roque and Jake to dig hasty graves with what little time they had before the authorities would check out the flaming wreck.

That had been a month ago.

From then to now, Cougar had not wanted Jake to be anywhere near him, but he wanted Jake to be _near_ him. He didn’t like Jake touching him, seemed irritated beyond all belief at Jake’s chatter, but still, at lunch in the factory he sat beside Jake, in the bars he ignored the masses of women who tried to get his attention and sat by Jake, and when they were in the hotel room alone he sat by Jake.

Jake tried not to take it too personally.

It was agonizing, having Cougar right _there_ and not being able to touch him or hug him or even wrap his arms around Cougar and hold him tight, trying to protect _something_ in this world. So Jake turned to trying to track down Max.

He had his laptop – they all had their equipment, as they had stuffed those poor kids into that helicopter instead of their things – and he was doing his best to try and track Max down.

It was hard, though. How could he, when all they had was a codename and a voice? No vocal patterns saved to his laptop, no identifying quirks of speech. Just flat vowels, slightly fuzzy from the static, and a kill order, and – apparently – a desire to get the job done and damn the consequences. Ends justifying the means, and all that.

Jake was ready to tear out his hair. Roque had been subtly implying that Jake ought to just commission them passports and get them into the United States. He’d been grumbling, in the (now infrequent) times that he was sober, that Clay wasn’t doing anything to get them back to their homes, that Roque wasn’t going to live the rest of his life in this shithole.

Personally, Jake didn’t get why Roque was so all-fired up to go home. He knew Roque, knew all of them when it came down to it – only he and Pooch had close families. Cougar’s parents had both died while Cougar was still in Basic, Cougar’s older sister was married with kids and didn’t speak to Cougar except to send him a perfunctory Christmas card, and Cougar responded by sending his two nieces and nephew Christmas money. Clay’s parents were dead, and he had a younger sister who also wasn’t on speaking terms with him, and a slew of ex-girlfriends (and two ex-wives) who also weren’t on speaking terms with him. And Roque? Roque was an only child, his mother dead, his father alive but vehemently against his son. Roque had never left base unless he was getting a hooker or getting drunk – even on leave, Roque went to places like the Bahamas or some vacation hotspot where he got drunk and laid just as if he was still on base.

Jake figured it was just the fact that Roque didn’t like being told what he could and could not do.

And maybe Roque was just used to the luxuries that came with being in America.

In any case, Jake wasn’t sure what to do with Roque, not when Clay asked him daily whether he was any closer to finding Max. There was nothing _to_ find, and it was driving Jake spare. As it was, he was standing in the tepid shower, letting the abominable water pressure dribble lukewarm water over his head. He wanted to go out there and just curl up against Cougar. His horse needed to get out, needed to run, or, failing that, needed reassurance, needed the herd, and the fact that he couldn’t have any of that, that he had nowhere he could transform and let his nerves be worked out through physical exercise, meant that he was restless. He knew he was really starting to annoy Cougar – Cougar would come in the room, slide off his boots and proceed to lie on the bed, hat over his face, arms folded behind his head, and every time there was a loud noise, Cougar would twitch. It was a disapproving twitch, Jake knew that, and with each successive twitch Jake would get quieter and quieter, and more and more nervous, until he’d finally mutter something under his breath about needing to run this or that errand and then he’d be off, out of the room and out of the hotel and onto the street. But he didn’t want to be chased out of his room because of Cougar’s mood. He wanted to go lie down next to Cougar, wanted to curl his arm around Cougar’s waist, lay his leg between Cougar’s legs, press his chin to the top of the Cougar’s head, inhaling Cougar’s scent and just getting comfort from Cougar’s presence.

But every time he moved close to Cougar, put his hand out, Cougar flinched, pulled away, or just didn’t react at all. It was that last one that drove Jake nuts, because they had had something really amazing together and then…

Nothing.

He wished he could go back to those days. Those days where it was action and then sex and then hacking on the computer…

His eyes popped open.

Hacking. He’d been hacking on the computer. He’d been trying to track down who had made that formula, and dispersed it to those terrorists, and while it had been slow going, he’d come across a couple of names over and over, and been sent a list of names by his underground contacts on top of that. They weren’t the designers, of course – they were distributors, investors, suppliers. They were the support system, and while he hadn’t found who ran them, he could remember one name from among the list of distributors as well as the list of investors – Fadhil.

The name of the guy that they were supposed to kill, until they had found out that he had brought kids in to act as drug mules, and then they had gone in and taken the kids out.

Why had they been sent to kill a financial backer of those bio weapons?

And – biggest question of all – was it a coincidence that they were sent to kill said backer, and then slotted to die from an air strike on their evac?

***

Almost two full months later, Jake was positive that there it wasn’t a coincidence at all. In fact, apparently his ‘covert’ research into the formula hadn’t been as ‘covert’ as he had thought – or, at least, when he had contacted other hackers around the US, one of them hadn’t been as covert as they should have been.

He wasn’t going to tell a soul.

How was he supposed to? How was he supposed to walk up to Cougar and say, “Those kids? Yeah. They were killed because _we_ were supposed to die, and we were supposed to die because _I_ couldn’t let go of the formula and had to keep looking into it, because I was a dumbass who was trying to prove that the CIA didn’t scare me at all.”

How was he supposed to walk up to _Clay_ and say that?

So he sat on it. He grew jumpy, cagey – more than usual, at least – and it was beginning to show. Pooch had asked him if someone was bothering him, Roque had noticed it enough to tell him to calm the fuck down and stop giving Roque tics, Clay had mentioned briefly that if something was going on that pertained to the group, Jake should mention it. And Cougar – well. He knew Cougar noticed it, because how could Cougar _not_? They shared the same room, if not the same bed, and the same job. And Cougar was starting to look at him more, a confused line across his brow that implied Cougar was asking him – but Cougar never said anything out loud, never mentioned anything, never changed his behavior. So Jake wasn’t going to really say anything.

After all, it was bad enough between him and Cougar as it was, and the team – well, they accepted him, and trusted him, and felt protective of him – but the team had been a unit before Jake, and they’d be just as good of a unit ( _perhaps even better_ , a traitorous part of his mind whispered, the same part that reminded him _techs are cranked out by technical schools every year, why are you so special, they could easily find a replacement_ ) without him, and he didn’t _want_ to give them reason to find out how good they’d be minus him.

He was meeting Pooch today to eat – Cougar was coming along of course, though Cougar hadn’t been eating all that well. None of them had, really, but it worried Jake, as everything seemed to worry him recently.

 _Bad as a needy fucking girlfriend_ , he thought morosely as he leaned against the wall of Pooch’s hotel room, waiting for him to grab whatever he was searching for in the drawer. Finally, Pooch came up with a set of keys, and Jake raised an eyebrow. “A car, Pooch? You have a car?”

“Boss lent it to me – told him I wanted to get outside the city for a while. Your day off, am I right?”

Cougar nodded, and that seemed enough for the both of them so Jake didn’t add anything. Pooch seemed to evaluate him before letting out a soft sigh. “Well, then, let’s go.”

The drive was nice, if a bit long for Jake’s taste and he was fighting the urge to just open the door and step out, moving car or no moving car. As it was, his knee was bouncing and he was humming under his breath. Pooch was always a quiet driver, seemingly happy with just listening to the sound of the road passing, and Cougar was Cougar, who never said words if he didn’t have to anyway, and Jake didn’t want to disrupt the silence by adding his nonsensical chatter to it.

_Besides, who knew what might fall out of my mouth if I do that._

Pooch pulled the car to a stop on the side of the road and Jake looked up, surprised. “Need to take a leak?” he asked, ready to ask if he could get out and wander around himself for a couple of minutes if that was why Pooch was stopping.

“Nah, we’re here. C’mon.” Pooch got out of the car and pulled out of the trunk a pack. Cougar looked as confused as Jake did, so at least it wasn’t as if this was pull-one-over-on-Jake-day. The two of them got out and followed Pooch off of the road and into the jungle area.

An hour or two later, they came out in a big clearing that overlooked a drop-off. Pooch moved to drop his pack down and to sit underneath one of the big leafy trees at the edge of it, and Jake cocked his head at Pooch.

“A picnic, Pooch? Really? I know we’re missing Cougar’s cooking, but this seems to really be going an extra mile that our relationship isn’t ready for.”

“Shut up, dumbass,” Pooch said genially, before motioning to the clearing. “How big is the clearing, do you think?”

Jake turned to look at the clearing – Cougar moved to sit down near Pooch, instead of standing a little behind Jake – and then looked back at Pooch and Cougar. “Pretty big.”

Pooch nodded in satisfaction before shoving Cougar up. Cougar stiffened at the contact, shying away, and Jake could take a little comfort in that it apparently wasn’t just him Cougar didn’t want to be around, but everyone. “You guys have been off for a while, and it’s gotten worse for you, Jake, so let your other forms out and just stretch, you know? I don’t know what the doctors said about your other form but I’m pretty damn sure you aren’t supposed to keep that side of you locked up for this extended period of time. I checked with Clay – the army shouldn’t be able to track your forms this far away from a ground base. Even if they can, this is far enough away that we’ll get a heads-up in enough time to jump towns.”

For a long moment, Jake just stared at Pooch, and then at the clearing again. High up on a mountain, unlikely to be seen by anyone except passing planes. Unlikely to be interrupted. No more keeping it under wraps because of the fear that the formula’s trackers would pick it up and the army would descend upon his head. Sun on his back and wind in his mane and the idea was such a relief, such a _release_ , that he couldn’t help but feel some of the general tension melt from him, something deep inside him that he hadn’t realized was clenched tight loosening. “Ah, shit, Pooch, you’re gonna make me cry,” Jake murmured.

“Well, fuck, don’t do that,” Pooch muttered, rubbing the back of his neck, but Cougar was already stepping behind a tree, stripping down, and then there was that definitive _shift_ of bones and muscle and skin and then a tawny cougar prowled out from the brush, stretching and yawning wide. Jake immediately followed suit, disappearing into the trees and folding his clothes up neat and nice before he _shifted_.

***

_Horse was alive, alive and running and RUNNING and there were so many scents, WONDERlifeearthwarmthSUNfoodPREDATOR and Horse just wanted to RUN and run because he was so tired of being locked back, so tired of being in four walls with four corners and there was bone deep FEAR in Other every day now, something Dark that Horse didn’t like, didn’t want to be there, because they were HERD and herd was herd, was the all._

_PREDATORmate and the scent confused him a moment, and Horse reared back, a surprised snort as he danced away from PREDATORteethfurtail crouched at his feet until Horse could remember, remember PREDATORmate, and Horse reared again, nervous and uncertain. But PREDATORmate was asking something, wanting something, and Horse was intrigued enough that he dropped back down, lowered his head, and then PREDATORmate was running off, RUNNING and Horse couldn’t help but run too, and they ran in the sun with the warmth seeping into his bones and soothing Other so that Other could stop thinking about the Dark and the FEAR that was so deep in the Other that it was entangled in Other’s very scent._

_When the sun began to lose its warmth, HERDbrotherOILfamily stood up and Other began to stir for the first time the whole afternoon. Time to go back, and for a brief moment, Horse wanted to argue, wanted to rear back, kick his hooves and demand that he be allowed to stay, to just RUN, live here as he was supposed to and not go back to the constant FEARworryDarkFEAR that Other lived with every day now._

_But Other asserted himself, slowly taking back the reins of the Body, and Horse let Other, because Other was First and Horse was Second, but Horse worried. And Horse didn’t know what to do_.

***

It was like waking up from a dream, from some magical land where he had completely dropped himself into his horse and not cared at all for the space of the whole afternoon. If he could, he would remain that way forever, locked inside his horse and just ignoring the whole world. Fuck the government, fuck Max, and fuck life in general.

But he couldn’t screw over his team like that, especially considering how badly he _already_ had screwed them over.

He pulled his shirt over his head and pressed his back against the tree, the heels of his hands pressed against his temples, head hanging low, breathing in slow and deep to try and control the constant anxiety that had been his friend since – well, since they’d been stranded here, really, but it had definitely gotten much worse over the course of the past one and three-quarters months.

Well, no, almost two full months. Two full months of this near worry, near panicky state.

“Jensen?”

Jake whipped his head around, surprised at hearing _Cougar’s_ voice of all things, because Cougar _never_ spoke unless he had no choice nowadays. “Yeah? Yeah, Cougs, what’s up?”

Cougar was dressed, and Jake realized he himself still had his socks and boots to pull on so he put more weight on his back so he could hunch over and pull on his footwear while still upright, tilting his head to watch Cougar intensely. Maybe Cougar needed something? Wanted something? God, it’d be good to have a definitive goal to work towards at the moment.

“Are you – alright?”

Jake swallowed. He could put off all the others, could shake his head or joke or force the joviality he didn’t feel anymore, but with Cougar he couldn’t. Part of it was just _Cougar_ – he couldn’t lie to the guy he loved, he just _couldn’t_ – but part of it was his horse, was the fact that Cougar was his _mate_. You didn’t hide things from your _mate_.

“I’m –” Jake paused, swallowed, and dropped his gaze. “I’m okay. Are you okay?” Deflect the question, push it aside, turn it around on the one asking. Jake was well-versed in psychology – or, at least, he minored in it for something fun to do when he was an undergrad, along with a few other minors and certifications – he knew what he was doing. Cougar apparently had an idea of what he was doing, too; his eyes narrowed and he looked closely at Jake – but he still stayed over there, instead of coming over to Jake, and there was still space between them.

“I am – getting to ‘okay’,” Cougar finally hedged. “But you – you fell into your other form. You did not – you were not with me, in the clearing, this afternoon. Only your… animal was.”

Jake froze for all of half a heartbeat, mind running through scenarios and picking and discarding options. Should that matter? It was a danger to the human’s control over their other form – all Procedurals had been told over and over again that a soldier who let the animal run free was a dead soldier, because there was no coming back from that. Once the animal got a taste of control, it would never give it up, and even start bleeding into their human form. But would Cougar call Jake out on it in front of Clay?

“I – it’s fine, man, really, I got it controlled, no problem. I just needed to run and my horse could – forget about a few things that I wanted to forget. I didn’t – I’m not going to –” He sounded like an addict, explaining he was in control and not the drug, and he swallowed nervously before dropping his head and asking quietly, “What do you want to – do about it?”

There was no noise and then suddenly Cougar was _right there_ and dammit Jake remembered why he thought Cougar was part ninja and part invisible man because no one, _no one,_ could be that fucking silent, it just wasn’t natural and was really, really unfair. But Cougar was there, one hand balancing him on the ground –

And one hand touching Jake’s cheek.

It was embarrassing how much that small touch made Jake want to recoil, pull back, because _they weren’t supposed to be touching, dammit, they weren’t supposed to be close because Cougar needed his space and Jake had to respect that and there were twenty-five dead kids and why did Jake think that meant it was okay to touch_?

But Cougar gripped his cheek, held him still. “ _Tranquilo_ , Jensen, Jensen, _Jake_ , what’s wrong?”

“It’s – god, Cougar, I think – fuck I hate myself right now –” Jake closed his eyes, held them tightly closed, because to open his eyes meant that he would be looking at Cougar and losing himself, losing his control, and he couldn’t let it happen. Couldn’t let it out, because it was overly emotional and just wrong and they never actually defined what was between them so he couldn’t over-assume, couldn’t expect that Cougar would want to hear about Jake’s anxiety. Hell, they never spoke about it before – before it had been sex, and teasing, and fun, and now it wasn’t and Jake was so mixed up inside –

“ _Tranquilo,_ Jake, _mi amado_.” Cougar did this weird shuffling noise and out of the blue Jake was pulled forward. Caught unawares, he couldn’t do more than fall forward, take a stumbling step to regain his balance, and then lean arms wrapped around his shoulders and held him tight against Cougar’s chest, Jake’s cheek against Cougar’s hair, and Cougar was rubbing his hand up and down Jake’s shoulder and arm, a soothing motion that just broke Jake down. He found he was shaking – not sobbing, just leaking a few tears, at least, his one saving grace – against Cougar, hands clutched tight in the back of Cougar’s shirt and shoulders shaking. Cougar didn’t say anything more, just kept on stroking and really, that was all Jake was really starved for – _touch_.

There was movement in the brush nearby, Pooch coming over, Jake realized, and he began to pull away from Cougar, stifling his emotions and trying unsuccessfully to scrub the evidence of his breakdown away from his face. Cougar wouldn’t let him pull away, though – he held tight, even as Pooch said, “You guys ready to go?”

Jake swallowed, hard, forcing everything down, because he couldn’t just lie against Cougar no matter how much he wished it. They needed to go back to the city, needed to return the car, needed to return to the new life they had built – the life Jake had forced on them because of his casual arrogance.

He wanted to throw up.

Pooch apparently realized that he’d walked in on something, because he stopped moving forward and Jake could hear the awkwardness as he said, “Ah – I can just wait – over there –”

“No, let’s go,” Jake interrupted, pulling completely away from Cougar and making his way towards the car without waiting for either of them.

***

Down by the car, Jake was pretty sure the reason it was taking Cougar and Pooch a while to appear out of the brush was because they were talking about him, and he found he really didn’t care all that much anymore. He was… tired. Of everything, of _anything_. Not that he could indulge in his self-pity, because he _had_ to find a way to get them out, had to explore both options, had to find them passports to get them back into the United States that wouldn’t cause waves and find the guy who set them up so they could safely claim their lives back without ending up in a detention center somewhere in the asscrack of the world.

Cougar and Pooch came out of the woods, and when their eyes rested on him they shared a significant look that Jake refused to categorize. Hell, if he was honest with himself, he probably should be offering to eat his own gun. How many times had the doctors on base warned them about sinking into their animal, letting the inhuman instincts run free? If it happened, even once, they warned, the animal gains a taste for it and it would happen again, and again, and then you were no longer human but a literal animal with highly developed kill instincts. He didn’t want to know what looks they were sharing about him. If Cougar or Roque was going to dispatch of him in his sleep – or Pooch, or Clay, but Jake wasn’t quite certain Clay had the sobriety necessary anymore and Pooch was softer than Cougar or Roque when it came to teammates – he would rather not know about it.

Pooch drove them in silence (Jake leaned against the window, ignoring the two of them in the front regardless of how many worried looks he got in the rearview mirror) back to the city, and once they stopped at the garage Jake got out of the car and walked down the street, not waiting for Cougar. He wasn’t going back to the hotel anyway – well, okay, he was, but just to pick up his laptop and slip into a wireless café across the city that would allow him to bounce his IP address even easier than his complicated dance of coding he normally did when he was in the hotel. He didn’t want distractions or complicated stealth tactics right now – not after whatever it was that just happened.

The café was twenty-four hours, and they knew Jake just well enough that they didn’t blink when they saw him sitting there but didn’t know more about him than ‘that white guy who spoke horrible Spanish but was willing to unlock iPhones and shit.’ He slipped into a small corner, started up his laptop, and lost himself in trails of data.

What he was looking for, specifically, was trying to follow Fadhil’s vast investments. On his death – and Fadhil had had a lot of investments – most of the money had scattered to different organizations in America and Europe and Jake had already (when he wasn’t trying to find back-alley ways to locating a voice on a SAT phone or sneaking them into the US with completely new identities or working in the factory and paying for the team’s food and rooms along with Clay and Roque’s beer) managed to trace a link of quite a few hundreds of thousands of dollars to American companies that Jake was beginning to suspect were fronts for someone or something else. He didn’t know who Fadhil was paying at those locations, if those companies had been the ones that had created that virus, if the reason the money had disappeared was because he had been paying someone off, or if the money had been funneled there for some other, perfectly legitimate reason. There were still investments, still hidden bank accounts that were accruing interest, of course – not to mention the couple hundred thousand had disappeared into Asia, and the biggest chunk of it, a bit more than four million, slipped into North Africa somewhere – but Asia and North Africa weren’t the connections he was looking for. He was looking very specifically for any trail that would explain Fadhil’s connection to that formula from Jake’s research, a trail that could have brought about the death of all those children.

That was really the only connection Jake had to follow. In the end, it came down to the fact that Fadhil had invested in the formula that had been horrible enough that Clay had ordered it destroyed completely against direct orders and Jake had been sent to solitary for it. That was the only – tenuous – link Jake had. What with everything else he was expected to do, he had never had the time to tease out any more concrete connections beyond that. The other hackers Jake could call on to help didn’t want to touch something that had so obviously burned him anymore, so except for one or two doing some superficial tracking of money and accounts (and looking out for Jolene and Emily and little Raina), he was completely on his own.

So he was digging.

Hours later, he pulled himself out of his coding fog to realize that his cell phone had multiple missed calls, from Pooch, from Clay, from Roque – from _Cougar_ , which was odd in and of itself. Cougar did his best to never use a phone if he could help it. In fact, half the time he expected Jake to use his phone _for_ him. Worried, now – what if something happened, and Jake hadn’t been paying attention and he’d missed something that was going to end up with either his team or random innocents killed, _again_?

He debated back and forth between calling Pooch or Clay – Pooch would’ve been the best bet, because Jake didn’t really want to talk to Cougar or Roque, Cougar because of what had happened and Roque because the guy never let up about getting them back into the States. Pooch was better than Clay, too, because Clay was almost always at some level of intoxication. But Pooch knew about what had happened today and would be too understanding and Jake just might end up spilling his guts to Pooch anyway…

Clay it was, then.

Closing the laptop, he left some money on the table and thumbed the call button on his cell. As it rang, he stuffed the laptop into his bag and made his way out of the small café.

“Clay.”

“You wanted me, boss?”

There was a pause, and then a muttered curse. “Jensen, where were you three hours ago?”

“Does it matter, boss? I mean, I didn’t know we had something planned. I was at a café, actually.” Jake fell silent, trying to get a read on Clay’s intoxication level.

“A café?”

“You wanted me, boss?” Not drunk enough yet to ignore Jake’s disappearing act, then. Jake cursed his luck as he moved down the darkened streets that still had people thronging along the sidewalk. At least the street itself wasn’t overly crowded, so it wasn’t too much of a security risk to have this phone call right here.

Clay’s voice came across as disapproving as only Clay could sound. “I wanted you a while ago.”

“Oh.” Jake bit his tongue, shifting around an arguing woman and her lover – he still hadn’t learned to speak Spanish confidently, but he could understand it and if it came down to it, could hash out a mangled version of what he wanted to say. “Well, if you still need me I’m up for it? Or if something bad happened? _Did_ something bad happen? I mean, I hope not, I think not, since you picked up the phone and everything, but maybe nothing happened to the team overall and something happened to someone. Did a car fall on Pooch?”

“What?” There was a confused pause, and Jake realized babbling might not be the best scenario at this point considering the fact that he was trying to convince Clay that he really wasn’t insane and slipping into his animal form for so long hadn’t damaged him at all. Then again, since he spoke like this all the time, would anyone even really know?

“I mean, I told Pooch it was kinda unnatural to – ”

But Clay interrupted Jake before he could really get going. “No, Jensen, nothing’s – wrong. Pooch and Cougar both seemed very concerned about you, and I understand that Roque’s been asking you to pull up some papers to get us back into the US and that I’ve been demanding a lot of your time, so I just wanted to make certain you knew that you weren’t supposed to be burning yourself out for this.”

That insulted Jake on a professional level. “Bossman, I never burn out.”

“Well.” Clay cleared his throat on the other end and Jake took the time to lean against the wall of the small corner store across from the hotel. Four in the morning wasn’t all that different from one in the morning or midnight, but the sky was a bit lighter, maybe. Not light enough to see a lot, but it looked as if the light in Jake’s and Cougar’s shared room was on.

Shit.

“Well, just in case. Pooch and Cougar have been worried, said something was up, and I wanted to know if this is something I should be getting involved with.”

Jake shook his head even as he said, “Nu-uh, bossman. I’m good. Peachy keen. Just was doing a bit of coding, looking into a pet theory of mine. Heading to the room now. You win any money at the fights tonight?”

Even without Clay’s sheepish silence, Jake knew the answer would be no. As sure as the team was that Clay would walk into a bar and immediately pick out the one woman that would try to gut him – or his team – before it was all over, they knew Clay had horrible luck at gambling.

Hey, though Clay was pretty good with horses – Jake could attest to that. Maybe Clay would have better luck gambling at a horse race instead of a chicken fight.

Filing that idea away for future consideration, Jake smirked. “Boss, you gotta stop hanging around those pits and just… stay in a bar or something. It’s embarrassing.”

“Shit, yeah, I know,” Clay muttered, before regaining authority. “You’d tell me if something was up?”

Jake hesitated a moment before hitching a shoulder defensively. “I’d tell you if something was up that I knew would put the team in danger. With all due respect, sir, my life is my life.”

Clay was silent a long moment before letting out a long sigh. “Alright then, son. Get some rest. It’s four fucking o’clock in the morning.”

With a smirk, Jake crossed the street to the hotel and said into the phone, “Yessir, bossman sir. See you on the flip side.”

Thumbing the phone off, Jake eyed the doorway to the hotel like the entryway of a prison. “Might as well get this over with,” he muttered.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, you'll still be getting a chapter next Tuesday, but I didn't want to leave you guys hanging that long and I wanted to thank everyone for sticking with the story even after the month-long hiatus, so here you go! Bonus chapter Friday!

Carlos Alvarez liked to think of himself as a simplistic and subtle man. He was in no way a good man, but neither was he a bad man. He wasn’t a particularly easy man to understand, but those who needed to comprehend him could. He’d taken the name Cougar before the formula, when a training exercise in the Rockies had him face to face with one. He liked the nickname, had made it his own much as Pooch had his nickname his own. Cougar was Cougar, and Carlos Alvarez was subsumed by what the name Cougar stood for. Cougar was in control, a soldier and a warrior and a careful man in everything he did. Carlos Alvarez was the man too young to be spec ops, too out of place to be anything but picked on, too short to matter, too quiet and too unsettling for a commanding officer to want on his team. Carlos Alvarez had surpassed most records of shooting and of jumping and of long-range shots and still hadn’t been taken seriously; Cougar could glare, lift his upper lip and let the animal show through his eyes, and men who were grizzlies and lions and tigers would back down. Cougar knew what he needed, knew what he wanted, and handled himself well.

Jacob Jensen made Cougar feel more like Carlos almost all of the time.

Around Jensen – _Jake_ , Cougar could remember Jake whispering one night against his tattoo, _call me Jake, Jesus, Cougs, I just swallowed you down to the root and tongue-fucked your asshole, you call me Jake_ – Cougar lost some of his control. He felt the constant urge to hold tight, hold close, to _possess._ Jensen wouldn’t appreciate it, he knew. Jensen was the stubbornest son of a bitch Cougar knew. Jensen had become a horse and had rolled with the punches, wore blatantly obvious shirts and then dared the assholes in mess hall to do something about it. Jensen held his own in a fight, hell, could hold his own in a firefight alongside Roque and that was saying something. Jensen was a damned good soldier and had been for a long while.

And, shit, it wasn’t as if Cougar felt inadequate in any way – he’d loved, before their relationship, when Jensen would come with him to bars and he’d play pool, how Jensen would watch him almost without meaning to. He’d loved the way that women (and a few men) had flocked to him, satisfied his body’s urges. It was a physical release that Cougar could control, could manipulate and engender. When Jensen would come with him to the bars, it was twice the rush, because Jensen would inevitably start out watching Cougar. Sometimes, when Jensen seemed to settle on the worst option in the bar (twice Jensen had picked out prostitutes, five times Jensen had picked out needy twinks that didn’t deserve Jensen, and a multitude of other partners had problems and defects and just weren’t what Jensen deserved, why the hell did Jensen keep picking the dregs of the bar to make a move on, really?) Cougar would intervene. If it was a woman, well, it was simple – a quick insertion between the woman and Jensen, a few muttered words of Spanish and a tilt of his head (he knew what he looked like in the cowboy hat – why did Jensen think he wore it, honestly) and the woman would forget about Jensen and keep her grubby paws to herself. If it was a man – well, that was a little harder, because most guys Jensen went for were looking for a muscular jock while unappreciative of Jensen’s brilliance and though it was simple enough to distract a woman, men looking for a tall, muscular build weren’t going to look at Cougar.

So Cougar would move over to Jensen, would sniff deep of Jensen’s scent and remind himself that Jensen deserved so much more than anyone sitting in this bar. There was a child-like innocence in Jensen’s actions and rants, so at odds with how Jensen could shut down during an op and shoot with the best of them, and these men (and women) didn’t know one fiftieth of what Jensen was. They would destroy Jensen’s innocence while reveling in his ferocity, or would focus on his innocence and be disappointed with Jensen’s fierceness. No, they had to accept all of Jensen or they wouldn’t get any of him.

Moving close to Jensen made Jensen’s eyes focus on him, and the men would realize they’d be intruding. If they assumed Jensen and Cougar were together, well, that was their own fault, wasn’t it? And if Jensen smelled really good and Cougar took a deep satisfaction with these encounters, more than he really should, well… who could blame him? Hell, he knew Pooch had commented before on how fit Jensen was, and Roque had grudgingly admitted the tech was definitely a strong soldier. Clay was – well, Clay only went for the psychos, and while Jensen was crazy he wasn’t Clay’s type of crazy, so Clay didn’t notice him at all.

And then one time Cougar’s interception hadn’t worked. He’d gone to stop the guy moving towards Jensen with purpose and the guy had smiled. _We’re good friends, we know one another, it’s cool man. Unless you want him?_ And Cougar didn’t know what to do, so he’d followed and acted like a jealous boyfriend and didn’t Jensen _realize_ —

_Oh._

They had gone home that night, Jensen drunk off his ass and Cougar mulling over how his ‘protective-of-pack’ feelings had morphed into ‘protective-of-mate’ feelings. When Jensen had gone one about Cougar hating him…

Cougar hated seeing Jensen in pain.

The sex that night had not been particularly fantastic. Jensen was drunk, Cougar had only rutted against Jensen’s groin, they’d only gotten shirts off so Cougar could nip at Jensen’s pecs (damn, the man had a gorgeous body) and scrape fingers down Jensen’s ribs as he writhed against Jensen’s hips. But from there, the sex had gotten better.

Much, _much_ better.

And so. Carlos Alvarez – Cougar – thought of himself as a simplistic man. One who needed little more than a job, a lover, and his gun. With those three things, everything was right in his world.

When his job was yanked out from under him, he was – understandably, he had thought – perturbed.

As much as Clay and Pooch and Jensen and, hell, even Roque mourned those kids, they hadn’t been the ones holding a little girl (Ara, her name was – had been – _Ara_ ) on their laps, talking about what she would do when she returned to her Mama. They hadn’t had the skills to converse long-term with any of the kids, not the way Cougar could, and so they didn’t hear their stories, didn’t hear their relief in the bus, and they didn’t have – that, that _punch_ that Cougar had gotten when he’d watched the helicopter blow up in the sky taking twenty-five bright smiles and chattering voices away.

Later, Cougar would remember that he had been the one to sink to his knees, and it had been Jensen who’d clumsily pulled Cougar up. Later, Cougar would remember the sheer panic in Jensen’s eyes as his horse vehemently fought being that close to burning wreckage. Later, Cougar would remember the hasty graves dug and filled with half-complete skeletons, twisted bodies, and it was barely one half of the kids they had found, keeping furtive eyes out because someone would have noticed the explosion, someone would be coming and they needed to get away from there, fall back and regroup and figure out what the fuck was going on because nothing made sense anymore. Nothing at all.

Even with all that, it was only now, as Cougar sat in the light of their shared hotel room ( _two beds and Jensen had tried to crawl into Cougar’s bed that first night but Cougar could only smell burnt flesh and hear tiny voices and so he had flinched and pulled away and so Jensen had left, and after a week of flinching and a week of leaving and a week of too-silent silences, Jensen had just stopped trying_ ) and waited for Jensen to come back, that Cougar realized Jensen had been mourning in his own way, unable to get over what had happened, unable to move on. Cougar had kept him tethered in the past and hadn’t protected his mate very well. Jensen had proven that earlier this day – or rather, as he glanced over at the ancient clock, yesterday afternoon – when Jensen had sunk into his horse to just stop thinking. Losing yourself to your animal… it was very dangerous. It had only happened to Cougar once, and he never wanted to see it happen to Jensen. Thankfully Jensen was not a predator, was not someone who could tear through a village on a rampage because they were hurting and cornered and unable to get free…

Cougar lifted his gaze to the clock again. His rifle was disassembled in his hands, the oiling cloth running over each piece with smooth, practiced movements. Three minutes after when he had last looked up; six hours after Cougar had come back from Pooch’s workplace and seen the laptop missing. About three and a half hours since he’d called Clay, finally, worried and uncertain about what to say. About three hours since he’d called _Jensen_ , looking for the other man, looking for something that would confirm that Jensen was alright. Or, well – alright was relative. After all, Cougar was pretty sure Jensen was _not_ alright.

He’d noticed, of course, the increased jumpiness. The way that, when they’d come back from a long day at the factory and Cougar would stretch out on the bed and sink into a waking nightmare, Jensen would end up making a noise, shocking Cougar out of it, but then go utterly silent. It wasn’t natural for Jensen to be that silent, and the silence would make Cougar more and more tense, muscles pulling tighter and tighter, and finally Jensen would mumble some inarticulate excuse and then slip out the door, leaving Cougar to his nightmares. He’d noticed the way that Jensen shied away from touch, when before he’d been overly touchy-feely, to the point that even patient Pooch would get frustrated. Jensen was a social creature, needed to talk and interact, and lately Cougar hadn’t seen him interact with anyone. He sat next to Cougar on that damn assembly line, shoving plastic limbs into rough fabric, moving the facsimile of bodies down to the next station. Head down, shoulders slumped, never looking over at Cougar.

Cougar missed Jensen’s gazes. Cougar missed feeling like he was the center of Jensen’s fucking _world_ , missed feeling the certainty that Jensen would always be there. And dammit if Cougar didn’t know it was his own fault, that Jensen was only trying to respect Cougar’s wishes, but shit, Jensen, couldn’t you tell that Cougar was ready now, Cougar _wanted_ interaction now?

There was a click, and then the door opened. Slow. Tread of footsteps had already told Cougar that it was Jensen – _Jake,_ his mind screamed at him, _call him fucking Jake_ – and that Jensen ( _Jake_ ) was tense, nervous, strung tight. Je – _Jake’s_ eyes were dilated, nervous and jittery and his steps weren’t controlled like normal.

Cougar waited for the second click of the door locking behind Jen – _Jake, Jake, fucking Jake is his name_ – before putting down the cloth and meeting Jake’s eyes with his own.

If anything, Jensen looked worse than he had earlier. ( _Not Jake, not his Jake, not with those empty eyes and nervous hands, his Jake was strong and powerful and a rearing stallion against a backdrop of blood dripped over gold_.) Dark circles under his eyes stood out almost more than the sharpness of his cheekbones. Jensen had stopped eating regularly. Cougar wondered how he had missed that.

“Ah… waiting up for me, Cougar?” Jensen began, voice forced to be light, casual. Joking. It fell horribly flat, making a mockery of Jensen’s words, and it physically hurt to hear.

Cougar swallowed hard. He hadn’t spoken since the crash, not unless he had absolutely no other way to communicate, and he’d stopped talking with his team altogether unless, like earlier, they weren’t face-to-face to read his body language. He didn’t know if he’d have the words or the ability to talk to Jensen, even though, if he had ever needed the words, it was now. The thought of Jensen not understanding Cougar, of walking away because Cougar was unable to tell him to stop, made Cougar’s blood run cold and he licked his lips nervously.

“Clay tell you to – what, end me?” Jensen placed the laptop down gently on the table and then sat on the end of the bed, watching Cougar. Now, with Cougar’s full attention on Jensen’s body, he could see the uneasiness, the nervousness, the tension. He could see the lack of food, of nutrition. Jensen’s color was washed out, weak, and pale, even though they weren’t out of the sun enough to merit such coloring.

_He is fading away, like I have been, and I must bring him back._

Fuck, that sounded too melodramatic even within his own head.

Tapping his fingers nervously against his knee, Cougar licked his lips again and shook his head slowly.

“Why the hell not?” Jensen asked, though his question seemed more rhetorical and weary than anything else. “Why the hell not? Why are you – fuck it all, Cougs, why the hell are you waiting up for me? Why are you even bothering to care anymore? Can you just – just stop, please? I don’t need – I don’t need your fucking pity, or Pooch’s, or – or fucking _Clay’s_ I just want you to stop it, stop it _please_ –”

Like a train-wreck, Cougar could only sit and watch as Jensen’s shoulders fell and he dropped his head in his hands, fingers digging into his scalp, tearing at the short hairs, lips clamped together as if he had to hold his words in. Cougar stood up quietly, setting the barrel of the gun gently down on the table next to Jensen’s laptop before moving to Jensen’s side, brushing Jensen’s shoulder with his own.

Jensen flinched, swallowed loudly enough that Cougar could hear the click of his throat. There was something – not right, here. Cougar could understand Jensen’s reaction, felt horrible that he had been the unconscious reason that Jensen had become like this, but Jensen was a capable man – they all had to be, with their line of work – and this level of deterioration, the fake happiness and upbeat smiles that were off, twisted, never reaching Jensen’s eyes, the nervous jumpiness that Jensen exhibited whenever Clay turned his attention to him and when Roque came around, the utter silence Jensen had wrapped himself in…

Nothing was adding up, and though Cougar couldn’t lay claim to Jensen’s genius with computers, neither was Cougar ignorant or stupid in any way. He knew Jensen better than he knew himself, sometimes, just as Jensen had known Cougar’s moods and emotions even when Cougar never verbalized it, or realized they were there to verbalize in the first place. So Cougar considered all options as he recalled his phone call to Clay hours earlier.

_“You live with the guy, haven’t you seen things have been messing up?”_

_“_ Si. _But – but I can think of no reason to make Jensen – retreat like this.”_

_“Cougar, every damned thing that idiot does is in reaction to something you do.”_

“I’m sorry.”

For a long moment, Jensen continued to sit there, too silent, too still, and Cougar licked his lips nervously. “ _Perdoname._ ”

Jensen exploded upwards, knocking the laptop to the floor as he whipped around to face Cougar, eyes wild even though his body was utterly, utterly still, and that was worse, in a way, because Cougar could see the leashed violence, the energy racing through Jensen’s arms and legs and chest even though Jensen was forcibly restraining himself. “What the _hell_ Cougar?” he demanded, voice rough. “Why the hell – what are you even doing? Why – I can’t – what the hell are you thinking? _Why are you saying that_?”

Cougar sighed deep in his chest, let out his breath slowly, never dropping Jensen’s gaze. _Jake. JakeJakeJakeJakeMINE_ his cougar whispered in the back of his mind as he reached up and removed his hat, setting it beside him so he could tilt his head up unencumbered and meet Jen – _Jake’s_ gaze. “I am sorry. I did not think this needed to be said. But I have upset you. I am not – a demonstrative person, Jensen. Jake.”

At Jen – _Jake_ ’s first name, a tremble appeared in his shoulders through his hands remained rock steady. Taking a step back, bumping into the table behind him, Je – Jake said slowly, “You never – you never have to say that to me.”

“I do.”

“No, you don’t –”

“I _do_.”

“No, you –”

Cougar stood up, stepping forward to crowd Jake’s personal space, even as his cougar purred happiness in the back of his mind. _MinemineminemineMINE._ “ _Jake._ ”

Jake swallowed again, leaning back a bit and blinking. “You’re really close, Cougs,” he remarked, and his voice was level even if his eyes gave away his confusion.

“ _Si._ I have forgotten, _burro_ , how you need things clearly spelled out to you. I am still here. I have not taken another room, or another’s comfort. I have only needed time.”

“Ah.” Cougar doubted Jake really got it, though he looked like he was valiantly trying to do so. “Well. Um. That’s… good?”

Cougar fought to keep his mouth from twitching in amusement. He wasn’t totally successful, and Jake’s eyes grew hooded, withdrawn. “Well, I’m glad for you Cougs, really I am, and I – if you’re asking for another room, well, I mean, I’m sure we can swing it, right? If Clay and Roque haven’t gambled away Pooch’s secret stash, I mean – ”

“ _Estupido burro_ ,” Cougar muttered, and then he reached up and grabbed Jake’s shirt and pulled him down into a kiss.

Jake – did not react as Jake normally did. A normal reaction would be one of two things – either throwing himself wholeheartedly into the kiss, taking from Cougar as much as he gave back, or flailing arms and embarrassed squirms (and Cougar had found out about that reaction when kissing Jake in full view of the vicious bitch that had been trying to hook her FBI claws into Jake’s ass). Standing still, trembling under Cougar’s touch, letting his mouth open but not actively participating in the kiss – none of that was normal.

So Cougar pulled away and decided to fight dirty.

“I understand,” he said soberly, and turned to pick up his hat.

For a moment, Cougar wondered if fighting dirty would even work, if Jake – if what they had had truly withered and died without Cougar even noticing. He had thought, in his need, in his grief, Jake would understand but… maybe Jake had needed understanding too, and had nowhere to get it from.

“You understand – what? ‘Cause I keep thinking we’re missing each other’s point here, and I don’t know how that’s working when there’s only one conversation to pay attention to and keep up with,” Jake asked, voice tentatively falling back into established patterns.

Cougar didn’t let his muscles relax in relief that Jake wasn’t willing to let Cougar go, and instead put his hat on his head. “You do not want this between us, anymore. It is not what you – would choose. So. I will maybe stay with Pooch, and let you – ”

“Whoa, whoa, what the hell, why are you saying this?!”

Cougar kept his head bowed as he moved to the side, a step closer to the door. “I have not been – attentive, and so you do not –”

“No, no, that’s _wrong_ , how could you get to that conclusion, it’s a _wrong_ conclusion, really Cougar, Carlos, you’re mine, okay, I will never not want you, you just, okay, you just took me a little by surprise, alright? I mean – you never – you didn’t like me touching you, or making noise, and really, I understand, I _get_ it, you saw kids die and that’s never a good thing –”

Half-turning back to Jake, Cougar cocked his head up, letting his gaze catch Jake’s in a possessive glare. “I needed time, _idiota_. I – you cannot expect me to give without taking. Not for this.”

“I didn’t – shit, Carlos – I didn’t mean it like that –” Jake swallowed hard, then took a step forward, and now Cougar could see looseness in Jake’s frame, some familiar gracefulness instead of the stoic rigidity that had been present for so long. “I mean, shit, I thought I was giving to you what you needed, space and shit, and so –”

“So what the _fuck_ was that, in the clearing?” Cougar demanded, and now he felt the familiar fear and anger rising. He hadn’t meant this to go in this direction – this had been him trying to coax and cajole Jake into telling Cougar what had happened, what was wrong, but apparently Jake was breaking down Cougar again, turning him into _Carlos_ with no control and no restraint and it terrified Cougar as much as it made his blood race with exhilaration.

Jake hesitated before lifting a shoulder, eyes turning away. Now this wasn’t Jake, Cougar’s Jake, this was Jensen, soldier and emotionless special operative. “My horse needed the run, and I needed a rest. I’m in control enough that it didn’t matter.”

“It almost did, at the end. You almost didn’t turn back. Your animal fought you.”

“I’m dealing with it, Cougar. I asked if you wanted me gone or dead, I asked if Clay gave the kill order, and you didn’t reply so I fucking assumed that it was a negative – was I wrong in assuming that, Cougar? Are you here to drag it from me that I need to be put down like the rabid animal I’m turning into?”

Then Jake was staggering back, eyes wide, and Cougar realized the stinging in his knuckles was from punching Jensen in the mouth.

With a growl, Cougar launched himself at Jake, slamming the taller man to the ground and grabbing Jake’s shoulders to shake the other man – hard. “You want to die so badly, Jacob Jensen?” he snarled, and he knew his voice was lower than a human’s, knew that his eyes were hot and wild and there were the beginnings of the change crawling down his spine. “You want to leave?”

For half a second – less, maybe a nanosecond – Jake was still, fear dominating his scent and the horse, panicked, looking out of those blue eyes, and then Jake’s face grew fierce and defiant and he pushed off the ground, rolling, to pin Cougar against the floor beneath him and suddenly Cougar was hard and Jake was hard and Jake was biting at Cougar’s mouth and throat, muttering against Cougar’s skin.

It was heat and sweat and groans in the growing dawn, the harsh hotel light throwing Jake’s face into clear relief, and Cougar tore and ripped at Jake’s clothes until they were both naked on the floor, fighting to be on top, Cougar scratching and clawing and clenching his thighs against Jake’s hips, holding Jake from getting away, and Jake was bucking and writhing and panting hard, chest heaving. It was painful, no lube and not enough stretching and Cougar wouldn’t give up any of it because Jake was _in him_ and hitting his prostate and lightning was flashing behind Cougar’s eyes. You couldn’t lie like this, couldn’t fake attraction, not with your body torn open and exposed like a raw wound, and Cougar could see Jake’s love, his desire, his _possessiveness_ in the way that Jake bore his weight down on Cougar, pinned him to the ground, lifted Cougar’s hips and drove in over and over as his mouth ran gentle, apologetic trails over Cougar’s chest and neck.

Their climax was swift and messy, and in the gathering dawn light they lay on the floor, Jake curled on top of Cougar, and Cougar brought his hand up to slide over Jake’s spine, soothing and gentling, because well, shit, this hadn’t gone a single damn way Cougar had planned…

But maybe that was alright. Maybe this was what Jake had needed, because now, with his head buried in the crook of Cougar’s shoulder, with his arm wrapped around Cougar’s chest and legs intertwining with Cougar’s own and wetness dripping over Cougar’s neck that Cougar and Jake both pretended was sweat, Jake began to talk.

The past few months came spilling out in hoarse whispers, Jake’s fear that it was his – _his_ – sole fault for the death of those children, his fear that he could never find Max or get them to the States and his fear of disappointing Clay and Roque both, his worry that Pooch would never see his child because of what _Jake_ had done and sometime in the middle of the narrative Cougar turned his head to brush his cheek against Jake’s temple, reassuring and gentling because while Cougar wasn’t going to apologize for what he needed (except to play dirty, to force Jake to open up) he still felt bad he had missed this in his grief, had missed Jake growing more and more agitated. No one else was left to see this; Pooch might not be as far down the path as Clay and Roque, but Pooch had been off for a while, unable to think beyond his wife and his child and Jake wouldn’t have gone to Pooch with this.

So when Jake’s voice ran out, when he curled around Cougar tighter and rubbed his nose against the hollow of Cougar’s throat, Cougar let out a long sigh.

“It was not your fault. _No_ , Jake – stop. Listen.”

Jake, who had jerked instinctively and began to protest, stilled and waited for Cougar to finish talking.

“In your situation, in your case – all of us would have reacted in the same way.” Cougar stopped, considering, because he was honest at all times and reluctantly admitted, “Well, perhaps not Roque. But Clay, yes. Pooch, he would be curious, because of the nature of the virus, but maybe he would not go to the extent you did. I – I would be curious, I was curious, but I did not want to know, so who knows? But no one – not Clay, not me, not anyone – can fault you for looking into it. Besides, you admitted you have not found anything about it, yes? You hadn’t had the time to look deeply because of missions. You are a part of this team, Corporal. You will always be so. We protect our own. Did you think Clay’s suspicions of his superiors went unnoticed? Do you think my refusal to work with other teams went unremarked? They were always on the edge of disbanding us, declaring us rogue. If it hadn’t been at that point, they would have done it another way. They were looking to burn us, looking to find that one point where Clay would deliberately disobey orders and they could catch him in it.”

Jake breathed softly against Cougar’s shoulder before saying hoarsely, “I think that’s the longest speech you’ve ever given me, including the lecture about misusing blind spots in security cameras for spontaneous blowjobs.”

Cougar hummed in his throat, thinking back to that memory with satisfaction.

After a small sigh, Jake nuzzled Cougar’s throat again and whispered, “I’m sorry that I don’t give back enough –”

“ _Estupido burro_ ,” Cougar growled as he shoved against Jake’s chest and pinned Jake down beneath him to show him just how much Jake gave him and got in return.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, it's not particularly long, but you'll start to notice movie dialogue and basically my interpretation of what's going on behind the scenes of the movie and stuff. I'm at 110k+ words and working on getting more - trying to keep the ratio between the most recent chapter and my writing around 40 to 45k words, in order to keep myself ahead of my posting.
> 
> Thank you all for reading and making this as great of a story as it is!

Clay didn’t know what Cougar did, though he had to admit it worked. All Cougar had told him was that he had fixed it, Jensen would be fine, and unless Clay wanted graphic details about _how_ Cougar had fixed it, he better stop fucking asking.

Clay stopped fucking asking.

And he had to admit, Jensen was more his happy self. He didn’t know what relationship went on between his sniper and his tech, because his sniper still went to bars with Jensen and kissed girls and made it clear he could have any-fucking-one in the place that he wanted, and Jensen still made inappropriate comments about women and didn’t seem to know when to stop, and then wondered why the girls went for his partner and not him (then again, the pink shirt was a big fucking clue). So as they walked through the cemetery, with his team running down the most recent two relationships that had soured (Amber had been fucking worth it though), he could see hope coming back to his men. Sure, Roque remained skeptical, but it was Roque’s fucking _job_ to be skeptical, and while Pooch and Cougar and Jensen joined in the ribbing, they were eager to meet this new character who—

“Well, she burns down our hotel.”

Yeah, who had done that. In her defense, though, it hadn’t been purposeful. They’d both been a bit wrapped up in the fight to notice a sparking television or the flammable liquor spilled all over the wall and the carpet.

It was difficult to defend her, or himself, because quite frankly Clay _didn’t_ have a great track record with women and his whole team knew that, but thankfully Aisha showed up and defended herself. She may not have been the best pep talker – Pooch and Roque certainly didn’t think so, and Clay could tell Cougar had doubts – but Jensen turned to Clay, trusting Clay, calling Clay _colonel._

“Don’t call me that,” Clay said, and it hurt to say it, physically ripped at his chest and vocal cords. “We’re not soldiers anymore.”

Cougar looked back down at the file Aisha had provided, brow furrowing, and Roque met Clay’s gaze, steady and maybe even a little proud that Clay was taking his words to heart, wasn’t seeing himself as defined by the military anymore even though it hurt to do so. Pooch shook his head, stood up from where he was sitting. “You know if we do this, we are waging a _war_ against the Central Intelligence Agency?”

Maybe that had been for Jensen’s benefit, because Jensen looked down, flipping the stylus in his hand nervously, and Cougar must have seen that because he looked up and said flatly, “They started it.”

That pretty much said it all.

***

“You’re not going to be able to transform once we’re back in the States.”

Cougar glanced over from where he was perched, watching Jensen pack. “ _Si_.”

“If it came down to it, I could probably jury-rig a scrambling signal that would disrupt the emitter the formula built in our DNA,” Jensen offered as he crawled under the bed and came out with mismatched socks. “After I run a scan of our bodies to figure out the configuration of the emitter signal. I haven’t noticed anything but I’m assuming they built it really deep into our DNA. Don’t want it blocked by your average jamming signal, after all. I don’t know how long it would take, though.”

For a minute, Clay considered it. Having Cougar and Jensen being able to utilize both their forms would maximize their efficiency, especially considering how much they trained together before Bolivia. Still… they didn’t have a lot of time, and besides that, he didn’t know how much Aisha knew about them, and there were plenty of terrorists who would pay big money to get their hands on a Procedural soldier in order to duplicate the formula. He couldn’t trust that she wouldn’t snatch some of their blood and sell it on the black market somewhere. “Nah,” he finally said, shaking his head. “Just don’t transform unless there’s no other choice. Last resort. Then get the hell out of the area. I don’t know how advanced the emitter is, but we plan as if anywhere on U.S. soil, you can be tracked. We clear?”

“As crystal, colonel,” Jensen muttered, dragging a shirt out from behind the headboard.

Clay swallowed roughly. “Don’t call me that,” he managed to say in a level voice, and then he turned to leave them to finish packing. Pooch stood behind him, eyes curious and uncertain. Unable to meet Pooch’s gaze, Clay hefted his pack up and made his way to the stairs.

Out on the street, waiting by the car, Roque watched Clay place his bag in the back. “You sure about this, Clay?” he said, voice harsher than in the cemetery. “Because we got fucked over once and I sure as hell don’t want to be fucked over again.”

“She’ll get us back in the States, like _you_ wanted, and we’ll avenge those kids on that fucker Max, like you should _also_ want.”

“Revenge doesn’t mean shit, Clay. We’re in no position to run an op on a super spook.”

Clay closed the trunk more violently than he needed to. “She’s gonna put us in that position.”

“With _what_ , Clay? Even if she managed to get us everything we needed, where the hell did she get that money from? Something isn’t adding up here, Clay, and you’re ignoring it because you’ve got a great piece of ass waggling in front of you yet again.” Roque snorted in disgust, but before Clay could make a response Pooch came out of the hotel and then stopped.

“Am I interrupting anything?” he asked, looking between the two of them.

Roque held Clay’s gaze for a long moment, glaring at him, before snorting and ignoring Pooch’s disapproving look when he said, “Nothing, Pooch. Where’re the damn animals?”

***

The plan to get back into the United States was depressingly easy – the only sticking point was finding a few extra coffins that no one would notice for a while and making sure that Aisha’s paperwork was thorough. Clay planned it out with Aisha, pointing to the times the coffins would be checked and sealed, making sure that Aisha’s paperwork would clear her for that check and sealing. The rest of his team waited in the warehouse by the coffins, lounging against the wooden boxes, too nervous to sit or stand. Cougar and Jensen were notably more nervous, though not to an untrained eye – Cougar was too quiet and still, but he wasn’t cleaning a weapon, just holding it, fingers a bit too tight against the barrel. Jensen was too loud and moved too much, but his words followed no train of logic that Clay could discern. Too jumpy and scattered to mean anything but nervousness, so after they’d gotten it down and double-checked the ability to breathe in the coffins, Clay pulled Aisha to the side and said quietly, “Jensen’s first out.”

She glanced over at the tech, moving erratically around the coffins, and the barely tolerant way Roque was watching him. “Claustrophobic?”

“Something like that.” Clay didn’t have to worry about Cougar too much; he was steadier than Jensen, and had learned to sit patiently and wait for hours in cramped areas for the right moment to strike. Boxing a horse in was worse, especially if there was no light, no windows, nothing to calm Jensen down.

Aisha raised one eyebrow, and Clay could read it clearly in her stance – she didn’t think much of Jensen, dismissed him as others had dismissed him before in the army, seeing only the talk and the bluster and the childishness that didn’t mesh with a killer personality like everyone expected. He let her go on believing that. She’d either learn, or they’d get the job done and she wouldn’t be around to know any differently.

With a sigh, she nodded and made a mark on the paperwork for Jensen’s coffin. “I’ll do it.”

Clay grinned, sharp and strong. Smooth sailing, it looked like. “Alright, Losers, let’s load them up on the truck.”

Quick work later, Aisha dressed in suit and with requisite ID card and paperwork, coffins neatly lined up in the covered truck bed, and Roque slid into the first and closed it over on himself. Pooch was next, and Clay looked over at his Procedurals.

“No transforming, not in the box, not on US soil. We’ll be out soon enough and back home before you know it.”

Cougar let the corner of his mouth twitch into a faint smile before moving to the third coffin and slipping inside. A breath of hesitation, and then he pulled the lid closed over him.

Jensen met Clay’s gaze, and it wasn’t the panicked horse Clay thought he’d be dealing with but Corporal Jensen, eyes hard. “You trust this woman, Clay?”

“Not a bit,” Clay admitted.

Jensen sighed, and climbed into a coffin. Clay watched carefully as Jensen closed himself in, and then poked his head out to where Aisha was standing by the side of the truck, ready to seal up the coffins and close the back of the truck. Once taken to the base, the coffins would be airlifted to Nogales, and then placed in a freezer until the ‘families’ came to claim the bodies. Everything was set to work out perfectly, but there were so many ways it could go wrong. Aisha could know about Cougar and Jensen being Procedurals, could isolate them during the trip, could sell them off. She could deliver them all into Max’s hands directly. She could be insane and kidnap them all for no discernible reason whatsoever.

_You trust this woman, Clay?_

_Not a bit._

“We’re clear, Aisha.”

She glanced up from the phone she’d been idling on, slipping it into a pocket before climbing into the truck and he watched as she sealed the others’ coffins. When she turned to him, he struck out, fast, hand in her hair and dragging her head back. “My men come out of this, safe and sound. If they don’t – don’t think for a second I can’t find you again. I have the best tech of the US Army on my side and you will never find the tracker he planted on you.”

Her eyes showed the faintest flicker of surprise, but he kept talking. “We’ll get Max for you. I don’t know why you’re funding this op, why you care so much, but Max screwed us over and I’ll keep my men in line if you hold up your end of the bargain.”

“Doubting me?” she asked, and smiled.

Clay could do nothing else but return the smile, letting her go. “Just informing you of what would happen should something – unplanned – happen between here and Nogales.”

Hours later, as Clay climbed out of the coffin and stretched, watched Jensen reach out to Roque uncertainly and Pooch give Cougar the grounding that the sniper needed, he had to admit that Aisha had held up her end of the bargain.

_You trust this woman, Clay?_

_Not a bit._

The op had run well, no snags, no one questioned Aisha’s paperwork, Jensen had scrambled the security cameras as they walked out with a small jammer, Aisha had (foolishly, Clay thought, and he could tell Roque wasn’t pleased either) dumped her badge as they walked out of the compound as if they belonged, and then they were moving to the abandoned warehouse Clay and Roque had scoped as a decent base of operations for the next leg of their plan.

Clay loved these kinds of operations.

***

‘Bird hunting’ turned out to be just as fun as Clay remembered, though his team was a bit rusty. It was set up fine, though – Aisha had located the truck while Jensen had kept tabs on the nearby army base until he could tag an outgoing vehicle that they could impersonate confidently. Then it was just the matter of making certain the outgoing vehicle was commandeered by Pooch and Roque, Clay acquiring the sedative and tranq darts, and Cougar setting up in a comfortable spot in the brush by the road. The accident was hastily set up, and it helped that the base wasn’t one of the big ones, was one that handled grunts more than operatives, because no blood on the road? Roque lifting his head? Their lucky break that the two pilots came out to check the situation instead of radioing it in first?

Yeah, they were more than a bit lucky, but it worked. Jensen was still nervous, still bad at flirting with women, and Roque’s threats towards Jensen were starting to lose the friendly edge and move towards the serious category. It was a relief that Jensen, instead of hovering around Cougar and Aisha – he seemed unusually interested in the woman, though Clay really didn’t know why, especially considering Jensen normally went for softer ones when he was trying to go for any at all and wasn’t focused on Cougar – moved over to Pooch and shifted around, getting materials Pooch needed quickly and competently. Jensen was sharp with computers, but Pooch was a regular wizard when dealing with mechanics and explosives.

Cougar had inserted himself between Roque and Aisha, which Clay was thankful for. They really didn’t seem to get along, and while Clay trusted Roque to do what he thought was best for the team, he didn’t always trust what that meant. Roque had proven to be ready to deviate from the path Clay had set and – well…

Roque had a point. Clay could see it, acknowledge it, and he had to admit there were worst things out there than twenty-five children dying. Hell, more children than that died daily in other places. But never before had that many innocents – that many _children_ – died because of _Clay_. Because of _them_. Cougar got it, more than the rest of them. Jensen felt bad, as did Pooch, but they were trying to move on with their lives, trying to piece back together what they had left, living in the present reality in hopes of making their present better. Cougar and Clay were living in that past and Roque, it seemed was focused singularly on the future.

Clay never trusted when people focused on the future to the exclusion of the present and past.

Back on U.S. soil, Roque was – understandably – antsy. Jensen seemed more nervous, as evidenced from how he watched Pooch assemble the rocket and talked to himself and practiced golf swings, of all things. Pooch – there was a strange tension in Pooch, a leashed fire that looked as if it was closer and closer to breaking free. They had families, Clay knew – Jensen and Pooch, not Roque. Roque had never had anything besides the army, like Clay and Cougar. If it had come down to it, Clay had thought Jensen and Pooch would go off reservation before Roque.

They were getting better at working together – finishing each other’s sentences, living in close quarters instead of drifting apart, like they had been in Bolivia. They could get better, they could get Max and with Max they’d have proof that they were innocent and Roque could have his life back, Jensen and Pooch could visit their families without worrying about putting them in the crossfire, and Cougar could – well, actually, it seemed that Cougar was as in it for revenge as Clay was. But with Max… maybe Clay could stop seeing that teddy bear in his dreams, stop seeing that little boy holding a burning teddy and smiling through blood, with other smiling, melted faces arrayed behind him.

Watching Pooch shoot off that GPS unit, Clay allowed himself to hope.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I'm still at 110k words. ;_; Everything should calm down now, hopefully, now that the first week of school is mostly over and I've got the gist of my classes as well as fixed the problems with the course I TA for.
> 
> Short chapter (1.7k words) but if you guys remember, the long chapters were outliers that by happy chance landed right before my hiatus; generally speaking, most chapters are in the comfortable 1.5k - 3.5k range.
> 
> Thank you for all your views, your comments, and your continued acceptance of my craziness! You are all amazing!

Pooch watched Clay and Aisha surreptitiously. Roque had already made it clear what he thought of the girl – because no matter what she might have claimed, no matter how long she’d been around, Pooch couldn’t look at her and think of her as anything other than ‘younger than Jensen and even Cougar and therefore a damned girl.’ Jensen was distracted by her, perhaps because she was just that hot, more likely because she didn’t seem as crazy as Emma had obviously been and so he was trying to figure out where her craziness laid and whether Clay was going to survive this one. Aisha was pinging on Pooch’s radar, too, but he was content to let Roque handle that – Roque took care of Clay because he was normally just as scary, if not scarier, than the women Clay seemed to pick up so easily. Cougar – hell, who knew what Cougar thought anymore? He’d grown more closed off since Bolivia and only recently had he started to open his body language back up. And Pooch…

Pooch was terrified.

Not that he’d admit it, but really – this was the middle of the eighth month, almost to the ninth month, his child was going to be _born_ and he wouldn’t be there to see it happen. Jensen had, at odd moments, set up a satellite link so Pooch could watch Jolene from afar. No communications, though, because Jensen had gotten cagey when Pooch had awkwardly asked, and swallowed nervously, and said something about spy-ware targeting Jolene and Jensen’s sister specifically, and that he would do his best to get rid of it but can Pooch wait a bit, Jensen would work on it?

Pooch had felt bad, because he knew how much Roque was pressuring Jensen to get them back into the States and how much Clay kept demanding for an update on Max’s identity. He knew something was rough between Cougar and Jensen, though he didn’t know what and it really wasn’t his place to pry. But that didn’t change the fact that there was only so many hours a day he could work and the rest of the time he sat in his tiny hotel room and ran his fingers over and over the wedding ring he never kept on his finger but never took out of his pocket.

“Yo, Jay – what do you think is up with this ‘don’t call me colonel’ stuff?” Pooch muttered to Jensen as he finished jury-rigging a rocket together to send the GPS to kingdom come.

“It’s classic loss of identity.” Jensen had been practicing golf swings, of all things, shifting and twisting in a way that Pooch recognized as needing something physical to do but unable to run or spar or anything that would really get the itch out. Pooch glanced back over at where the other three members of their team waited – and Aisha, can’t forget her – as Jensen muttered something about psychological babble and then stopped, looking up at Pooch, and it seemed as if Jensen wanted to tell Pooch something. There was an apology there, a deep guilt that surprised Pooch, and then Jensen was spouting off some weird shit – “Did you know cats can make thousands of sounds and dogs can only make ten?”

Pooch blinked at Jensen, cautious and uncertain about what Jensen was trying to tell him. Was something up with Cougar? After all, only Jensen would notice or know. But Pooch could clearly remember that day he’d taken Cougar and Jensen out to the forest, let them run in their animal forms, and it hadn’t been Cougar having a breakdown. He knew something was up but now… now he was fucking worried.

He bit it back, though, didn’t ask. No airing the dirty laundry in front of the stranger, after all. Instead, he hefted the rocket onto his shoulder, pride bursting in his stomach at the feeling of being able to build pretty much anything with scraps that most people would stare at blankly. This was what he was meant to do – this was what he could and did do, easily, and enjoyed immensely.

“BlaGyver!” he crowed, and relished the excited look on Jensen’s face, the proud and eager looks on Roque and Cougar’s face, the pride and accomplishment on Clay’s. Aisha’s – Aisha’s he didn’t know how to decipher, and so he didn’t.

***

Riding in the truck from New Mexico all the way to Florida was – awkward, to say the least. Ignoring the fact that driving in close quarters for such an extended period of time would result in Roque threatening all of them, even Clay, at least twice and Jensen going crazy and even Pooch getting itchy legs – where did Aisha sit? Next to Clay seemed only reasonable, as no one else knew her or trusted her, but that squished Pooch next to Roque, Cougar and Jensen packed in the middle, and then Clay and Aisha on the end. There was a car waiting for them on the border of New Mexico and Texas, one that Clay, Aisha, Jensen, and Cougar would take the rest of the way to Florida, but for right now… Yeah. Awkward didn’t begin to _describe_ it. Roque kept glaring at her as if she had no right to be there. Really, Roque was right.

It was made even more awkward as they made their plans, Jensen remarking on weapons and tech purchases, Clay nodding and making suggestions, Cougar with his arms folded offering a word here or there, Pooch glancing in the rearview mirror to shut down a crazy-Jensen-plan that Jensen threw out precisely because it was crazy and it would ease tension and because Jensen loved to one-up his craziness as often as possible. And then Aisha would speak up and the atmosphere would completely change; everyone went silent, Cougar’s eyes traveling over to her and resting, inhuman and _hungry_ , Roque scowling at her offer to contact this or that person for more weaponry, for the specialized equipment, and Clay torn between looking proud and measuring. Jensen looked confused, uncertain of where to put her, and Clay really should see how this was messing up dynamics. He was the one trained to deal with Procedurals, after all – and Jensen was so obviously scrambling to figure out where she sat in the chain of command. Cougar also seemed to be testing that in subtle ways, meeting her gaze, ignoring her suggestions entirely, pretending she didn’t exist, but the way Jensen tested was by running at the boundaries instead of brushing against them like Cougar did.

Pooch let out a sigh and shook his head as Clay nodded finally at Aisha, thanking her for the help and yes they would like her input, thanks for offering. Never before had Clay tried to foist his girl of the week on his team. They put up with the torrid affairs and the hurricane that each girl wreaked on Clay, but never had a woman directly interacted with them unless to threaten Clay with them. It was disconcerting for _Pooch_ – how much more must it be for the Procedurals? For Roque, who obviously felt supplanted?

The good thing about the warehouse on Dodge Island was that it was set out of the way, abandoned enough that workers and teenagers weren’t snooping around but not condemned yet, set near Miami Seaplane Base, so a random helicopter wasn’t going to set off any alarms just yet. There were some offices set up on a second floor in the back of the warehouse, too, where they were bunking, but the area in front was just an open floor. A metal-working facility that still had a few pieces of machinery hanging around. Easy enough to fix up two cranes, have Roque man one while Pooch manned the other and move the helicopter off the truck bed and onto the floor. Clay went into the Upper East Side to meet with a contact who was supposed to be setting them up with some weaponry of their own and some C4, and Pooch and Roque were supposed to hide the truck somewhere in East Little Havana before picking up some more supplies for Jensen – radios and some shit that Jensen would need to eavesdrop on other frequencies and the like.

“You don’t like her either, do you?”

Pooch slanted a gaze towards Roque, not willing to look at the taller man sitting against the other door. “I don’t know her,” Pooch finally said.

Roque laughed, and it was a bitter laugh. “Man, don’t you just want to see your family again? Don’t you just want this to _stop_? Why the hell is everyone going along with this crazy-ass plan?”

Pulling in a slow breath, Pooch drummed his fingers against the wheel of the truck before saying slowly, “I see those kids every night, Roque. Every night – except when we had the plan to get back to the States. Then, I could feel better about doing something about it. I’ve got a kid on the way, Roque. A kid who is in the crossfire if I just show up. As much as I want to go home to my Jolene – shit, Roque, do you think they won’t notice that? Won’t notice some guy appearing at her house, living there, doing – what, acting as a mechanic for the local car shop? I need my name cleared before I can do anything. Jensen’s sister and niece; they’re in the same boat. That’s why _I’m_ on board.”

“So you’re gonna trust that cunt?”

Pooch bit his lip to correct Roque’s language; his mama had taught him every lady deserved respect, but Roque was upset and now was _not_ the time to antagonize him. Roque had steadily moved more and more towards a breaking point, and if Pooch couldn’t talk him down, he didn’t know what Roque might do. “I’m not trusting her. Hell, I wanted to punch her in the face when she spoke up and offered contacts to us as if we needed her to hold our hands as we got together our gear. We’ve been doing this a long time, and she’s not one of us. She isn’t a Loser like the rest of us, Roque, and she never will be even if she spends the rest of her life with our team. We’re losers because the army had nowhere else for us to go and because Clay took us in. She’s just a stray, alright? Nothing we need to be working ourselves up over. Alright?”

Roque snorted and looked away.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.
> 
> I've had a depressing weekend. Or, well, I've had an ecstatic weekend, because I thought I did something great, I opened into a new fandom, and, well... yeah. I'm just... gonna stick to Losers fanfic forever, okay?
> 
> Anyway. Um. Wordcount is at 113k. I'd like to say it's not 115k because I was trying to finish a fic in another fandom, but I dunno, maybe just depressed. Can't seem to slide into their POVs all that well anymore. Hopefully that will disappear. If not I may just lower my goals like I do all the time anyway.
> 
> If I don't reply to your comments its because I'm hiding from Ao3 and pretending I didn't screw up as much as I did. I swear I'll reply to them soon - probably by next posting day.

Settled in Dodge Island, Roque watched Pooch explain what he would need to make the magnet work, how they wouldn’t need to shell out for an industrial strength one but hooking a rectifier up to the fuel tank would get them what he needed, but he kept his eye on Aisha. He _hated_ this new girl. And as sexist as it made him, as politically incorrect as it was, he wasn’t going to think of her as anything other than a little girl playing in the big leagues, because she wasn’t _them_. She had no credentials, nothing to back up her claims, just money and hell, celebrities in Hollywood had that by the bucket-load. Anyone could get money if they tried. Shit, Roque had a stash in his bags that came from illegal cage fights and jobs done on the side that just needed brute force and muscle. If he had to, he could run once they got to HQ.

But he wouldn’t. Damn Clay, and damn Roque himself for buying into what Clay was suggesting, but Roque was going to give Clay this last chance, was going to bust his ass for a voice on a radio that they’d likely never find, and when this turned out to be a wild goose chase Roque would gut Aisha, refrain from telling Clay ‘I told you so,’ and drag Clay away to a Caribbean beach somewhere.

The others… Roque didn’t know where they’d go, what they’d do. Roque hadn’t spoken with anyone about it, but he’d been thinking about retiring, getting out of the field and behind a desk or just out of the military in general. Nothing held him to the army, nothing at all. He wasn’t a Procedural, so they’d let him go. He had skills with a knife and experience that came in handy for black ops but, hell, that’s what new trainees were for. There were others out there with knives just as big, skills just as honed, and maybe with a little less experience, but Roque wasn’t going to live the rest of his life getting shot at and, shit, Clay was hitting his mid-forties. He was slowing down, _Roque_ was slowing down, and yeah, Pooch was still in his early thirties and Cougar in early-to-mid-twenties, Jensen in his mid-to-late twenties – they still had time in them. Maybe Pooch was right, and they couldn’t go back to their families, but really, Jensen’s family would live without him. Cougar _had_ no family. Pooch – well, Pooch was the only one with close, immediate family that needed him in the house. Dads shouldn’t abandon their kids.

So Roque would put up with this, as he leaned against the wooden frame and memorized the layout on the table, figured out what went where and who would be in which position. He was with Clay, of course – he always was – but they’d have to keep an eye on Jensen’s position, as the most exposed of all of them. Jensen was best at blending in with the population, a good conman, but any man could be taken down by the wrong person looking over at the wrong moment.

And here was Aisha again, striding back over with Cougar and trying to be a part of their plans and really, Roque had had enough. As much as Pooch had tried to convince him, as much as Jensen seemed to accept her in their little unit structure, as much as Cougar spurned and glared at her in turn, Roque was going to say his piece. They had _options_ that Clay wasn’t telling them and they needed to be aware of it, needed to know that this was it. They could break it off right _now_.

“Uh, Aisha – what do you want with Max?”

Roque ignored Clay’s weary, “Roque,” and instead focused on the danger right in front of them. They couldn’t see it, or were deliberately looking away, and Roque just wanted to _shake_ them, goddamnit.

She kept her back turned to him, nose in the air, voice calm and collected and just a little pissy. “We made a deal.”

“ _Fuck_ deals, okay? You made a deal with _Clay_.”

Pooch and Cougar watched almost apathetically, but he could see the tight lines in Pooch’s face, the lazy predator in Cougar’s eyes. They were waiting to see how the second in command dealt with this new threat and he’d be damned if he let the team go to the dogs because Clay’s dick had more blood in it than his brain at the moment. At least Clay wasn’t stopping him, not really – he was waiting to see how it played out between the two of them, and Roque watched as Aisha sized up the situation in a heartbeat, eyes half-lidded and cool, before she answered bluntly, “Max is trying to buy next-generation weapons. I don’t know the endgame. What I do know is when Max takes an interest in something, people die and world maps get redrawn.”

Roque couldn’t help it; he snorted, shook his head. Who did this bitch think she was? Did she honestly expect them to think she was doing this to keep Max from buying weapons? No, she was some child snapping at the heels of a much bigger opponent than she could ever hope to bring down. That wasn’t why she was here. That wasn’t why she’d gathered ex-special operatives who could be burned because, legally speaking, they weren’t alive in the first place. That wasn’t why she was expending thousands of dollars and trying to worm her way into Clay’s bed. Roque was talented at sniffing out the crazies and this girl set off his radar something fierce. Why couldn’t anyone else _see_ that?

“Bullshit,” he said, almost immediately after she was done talking. “Do you really think you can take him on, little girl?”

That stung her, he could see. She didn’t like being called little girl, didn’t like the slur against her skills and her abilities, and she responded with the same mocking manner. “No, big boy – _you_ are.”

And Clay just fucking _sat_ there, as if this made sense in some corner of his booze-soaked brain, as if this was completely alright. Pooch looked uneasy, and Cougar looked more suspicious, not less. Hell, even Jensen was looking whiter than normal, pale and uncertain as he watched the exchange between the two of them. She had just _said_ that she was using them to take out someone she wanted taking out and last he knew, the Losers weren’t hired guns to deal with problems for other people. “I’m just gonna kill her right now, Clay,” Roque said, voice low and husky as he pulled his gun, took the safety off.

Damned cunt didn’t even blink.

“No, you’re not,” Clay sighed from his seat.

Roque’s lip curled up into a tight, bitter smile, because Clay really didn’t know him anymore, did he? “Yes I am,” he stated baldly, and Aisha seemed to see the crazy in his eyes, to realize that yeah, Roque would do it, because she immediately jumped back on the fact that she was funding the operation, that they needed her. Reminding everyone else why she was important to keep her around. Like Roque gave a shit. Really. He had the gun pressed against her forehead and he could _see_ it, see the bullet’s path, the splatter of blood and brain matter and bone and the light leaving her eyes instantly. All their problems would be over.

“Roque.” Ah, Clay seemed to notice something was off. No one else moved a muscle; hell, Jensen looked like he’d forgotten how to _breathe_. “ _Roque_ ,” Clay repeated.

Peering at Clay from under the arm that held the gun steady, Roque met Clay’s tired gaze with his own furious one, and Clay just looked at him, weary and disappointed and stressed out.

Shit. Roque couldn’t pull this off unless more of the team was behind him. They seemed uncertain about this new presence in their team, and Roque would need to build evidence against her before he could pull off a power play like this and get her out of their space.

“Okay,” he said, voice sharp and cutting. “You stay with us – but if anything smells like a trap, I get to put a bullet in your skull.” Ignoring everything else, he held Aisha’s gaze, let her see the predator behind the thin mask of civility, and he saw an answering predator in Aisha’s own eyes. “Does that sound fair?”

She turned her back on him, looked over her shoulder flirtatiously while her eyes promised him death. “That sounds fun,” she purred instead.

Fucking Clay. Fucking Aisha. And fuck all the rest of them for not _seeing_ and intervening. This chick was fucking _bad news_.

As Roque moved towards the offices where their kits were set up, Clay stood. “I knew you weren’t gonna shoot her,” he murmured.

Roque snorted, and shook his head. “Not today,” he agreed, and silently made a promise. Someday. Soon. He’d put a goddamned bullet between those pretty, pretty eyes and call it a day, walk over her corpse without a moment’s regret.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you guys know what? I think I'm gonna change the update schedule to be Mondays and Wednesdays, because while I thought I should be reserving those days to read for my classes (10-1 on Tuesdays, 10-4 on Thursdays, which is why the latest updates have been so late in the day) it turns out that 1) I am a horrible procrastinator (read the 10 of the 13 readings yesterday from 4pm to 1am, with breaks, and the last three hastily skimmed while waiting for my sister to shower before leaving to school) and 2) I can update earlier and stop telling myself I can take a break from reading because I really need to type out the next section! - and then get distracted from tumblr, or from this other story I'm currently fighting with.
> 
> Also, (if you can't tell) I'm much more positive and happy about life at the moment. Thank you for your nice comments and words of support. I write because that's pretty much where I receive validation, and I think it was the shock of it being the first flame ever that really had me acting so pathetic. However, not positive enough to crank out more than 116k words. Looks like my new goal will be 3k words between every update, now.
> 
> This chapter is the first of only two chapters that messes with movie!canon, and it's pretty small but important otherwise. I don't think I did anything special to hiding or downplaying it, but if you want me to point it out go ahead and let me know and I'll make a note to do so in, well, my next author note.
> 
> Thank you all for sticking with me, for helping me stay positive, and for still reading this story and buoying me that way!

Chopper-jacking never got old. Seriously. Jake loved every minute of it.

He didn’t much enjoy sitting squashed in the truck, conversing idly with everyone only to have Aisha interrupt. She seemed to think that they were all going to be buddies because of one successful mission together – and she hadn’t even been part of it, really. All she’d had to do was act a part at an overworked border town that probably let a whole bunch of shit through customs daily, and then she had to wait in the eighteen-wheeler with Clay while Cougar and Pooch did the real work and Jake kept the medics’ attention on him and Roque’s faux-dead body.

He could tell Roque was ready to gut this woman, had been on edge since – well, shit, pretty much since three weeks after the death of those kids. Jake didn’t know how to fix that, though, and so he was stuck just twiddling his own thumbs and waiting for a clue. How was he supposed to deal with Aisha, anyway? It seemed like she was calling the shots, laying out plans, dictating their movements. Clay seemed fine to go with the flow for the moment, so did that make Clay leader and Aisha – what, co-leader? Or was Aisha leader? Or, fuck, was that why Roque was up in her face, was she taking up the second in command spot? Jake’s horse was as confused as it was restless, and he had to constantly remind himself that they weren’t in an anonymous jungle somewhere; they were near good satellites that could count the pimples off a pizza guy’s face from space. If Jake transformed here, the tracker in the formula that bonded with his DNA would go off, and the satellites would pick it up for sure. Maybe they’d be lucky and the nearest base wouldn’t be paying attention to it – maybe they wouldn’t. Jake wasn’t about to blow _this_ op because of his inability to leave well enough alone.

But damn, his horse was getting fucking restless and cranky.

In the warehouse at Dodge Island, Florida, Jensen paced the floor. He really had nothing important to do until Pooch and Roque came back from picking up some more supplies, and then all he really needed to do was set up a secure link, a jammer, and… pretty much nothing else. This leg? Was all weaponry. That was Pooch, Roque, and Clay’s look-out, not his.

Standing and watching Cougar spray-paint the helicopter was not his idea of fun, however, and Jensen was bored out of his mind.

Aisha was sitting over by the tables, though.

Jake bobbed around the helicopter, paused again next to Cougar. He could be fooling around on a laptop right now, could be trying to pull more intel about this Miami and Max thing, but he didn’t have decent equipment and besides, he preferred to hack alone, or knowing someone would watch his back. While he could retreat into the offices they’d made into makeshift rooms, there was no guarantee Aisha wouldn’t follow him.

And Aisha was another reason his horse was so restless.

Jake freely admitted that, out of the other Losers, he was most likely on the bottommost rung. Had he been a predator, he’d have been the omega, the very last. He was fine with that, had no problems, but Aisha bothered him because something smelled _off_ about her. He also knew that Aisha bothered Cougar because while the ranking had always gone Clay, Roque, then Cougar, both Roque and Cougar knew that Cougar could give Roque a run for his money, maybe even win. Aisha somehow slotted in there, but whether it was above Roque and Cougar, between, or after Cougar, neither one knew and so both Roque and Cougar were antsy. Cougar’s cougar also made Jake’s horse antsy.

Well, why the hell not?

Jake made an aborted motion towards Aisha with his head, and when Cougar caught his movement, those dark brows twisted in confusion for a moment before understanding appeared in Cougar’s eyes and Cougar’s eyebrows turned down into a fierce glower and a head-shake in the negative. That offended Jake a bit, because okay, yeah, he wasn’t the biggest badass on this team, but he was still pretty badass and could handle himself, thank you very much. Putting up a hand to tell Cougar he was fine, he’d handle it, he moved over to Aisha and prodded gently at trying to figure out more about her.

Her answers – _‘When I was little, I collected human ears’_ – made Jake’s horse’s back go up. Something smelled _wrong_ with her, crazy wrong, _Other_ wrong, and so he dropped his head, moved away. Surely either Clay or Roque and Pooch were back. He’d go hang out there, ignoring the short movement of Cougar looking over at him and then back at Aisha.

***

Listening to Roque and Aisha go at each other was not particularly on his ‘want to do’ list, but there didn’t seem to be much else to do. Clay wasn’t stepping in, and Jake could see that Cougar was winding tighter and tighter because of it, not certain whether that meant that Clay was letting Roque and Aisha fight it out for second place or if Clay wanted to hear the answers Roque was demanding. Either way, when Aisha finally opened up…

_“Max is trying to buy next-generation weapons.”_

Jake didn’t realize you could _feel_ blood draining from your face, and Cougar looked at him worriedly – because _of course_ the one time Jake didn’t want Cougar to notice, Cougar was ignoring (or trying to ignore) the drama before them and was watching Jake instead. Jake offered up a plastic smile, made some quip about things sounding like his parents, and made Pooch laugh. Clay, Roque, and Aisha weren’t paying attention to him (to be fair, they never did unless he was making a nuisance of himself) and he would have gotten away with it if Cougar hadn’t been fucking _paying attention_.

When Jake left the room, leaving Pooch and Clay to finish hammering out the plan – Jake already knew his limited role, knew what he was supposed to do, and the heavy hitting would be done by Roque and Cougar, the most dangerous part would be by Pooch, and all that really remained was figuring out who would have to take Aisha along with them (really, it could only be Clay and Roque or Pooch) – Cougar followed Jake out, up the rickety stairs and over to the room Jake had claimed. Jake pretended not to really notice Cougar’s face as he sat down at one of the desks and flipped open his laptop.

“Did you know that the name ghoul comes from the Arabic word ‘ghul’, a creature that would break into tombs and feast on the flesh of the dead? Comes from the A Thousand and One Nights, too – a root of one of the stories told. A Thousand and One Nights – Alf Laylah wa Laylah – is actually an Iranian story, not Arab. Calling an Iranian an Arab is insulting to the Iranian memory, actually, considering that they see Arabs as Bedouins wandering the desert while the Persian culture was strong.”

“Jake.”

“As much as the Persians would like to claim they’re the greatest civilization in the world, though, the Chinese and Sumerian civilizations beat them out. The Sumerian culture gave us the wheel, actually, and—”

“ _Jake_.”

Jake bit his lip, keeping his back to Cougar even as he tapped fingers nervously against his laptop, waiting for it to boot.

“What is the matter, Jake?”

“See, it’s not fair that you using my name like that distracts me so much. That should be unfair. I mean, I can’t really use your name back for maximum effect, you know? Carlos doesn’t seem to faze you all that much, and Cougs is a nickname everyone hears me say. Do you think we should have a language like all couples do? Of course, we’re not really a couple. Unless you want us to be. Did you know—”

Hot breath blew against the back of Jake’s neck and Jake shivered, went still. After a brief moment, a gentle kiss was pressed to Jake’s shoulder and then Cougar moved to the side, perched on the edge of the desk and looked down at Jake.

“Did you know that when you say my name, Jake, I cannot think of anything beyond you?” Cougar murmured, removing his hat and placing it down on the desk. Sighing, Cougar looked away, looked to the door that he had closed behind him and Jake, and Jake tried to keep his breathing from turning into panicked hyperventilation.

“I thought we established hiding things was not helpful, Jake,” Cougar said with a sigh, shifting so that his knee brushed against Jake’s arm.

Cougar talking this much meant that Cougar thought there was a problem. Normally Cougar said everything with body language. It also revealed Cougar’s nervousness and uncertainty with the situation, which wasn’t helping Jake’s restlessness any. Jake swallowed hard and offered up, “If we’re being fair, we discussed the need of me needing to be more patient with you, and that my horse coming out wasn’t going to be overly harmful as long as I never did it again. We never actually discussed secrets. Everyone has secrets.”

With an exasperated sigh, Cougar turned to cock an eyebrow pointedly at Jake.

Jake fidgeted in the chair, and then stood up, beginning to pace. “Look, I – I appreciate you keeping everything a secret from Clay. I know I should’ve told Clay, that I shouldn’t be keeping secrets from him, that I shouldn’t be making _you_ keep secrets from him. I just – I need to get proof, you know? And I’ve been trying, even here, and believe me it’s easier to bounce my IP address and shit from inside the US than outside it because of the few hotspot areas in Bolivia. But – do you remember that chemical formula? The one we were supposed to bring back and we didn’t?”

Cougar’s eyes darkened, and he nodded slowly.

“Did you – did you see what it was supposed to do? Did you – did you know?”

For a long moment, Cougar held Jake’s gaze, and then he slid back further on the desk, letting one foot swing idly and the other hooked on the handle of one of the drawers. A gun appeared in his hands, and he began breaking it down and then putting it back together. He seemed to make up his mind before he dropped his head – hat still on the desk, and Jake didn’t know how to admit that Cougar _looked_ younger without the hat, looked as if he really was younger than Jake – and shook his head no.

Jake swallowed hard. “Do you – do you want to know? Or – I can skirt that part of it, if you want.”

Cougar lifted his head and met Jake’s gaze steadily, which wasn’t an answer one way or another that Jake could tell.

“Okay. Okay. Well – fuck. Okay. See – there was a formula we had to get back, right? Orders were to come back with it. Thing was, I was alone in that mission, you know? Alone inside, at least – all of you were outside. I had to get into the lab, find the information, and get out. You were cover – of course, jeez, you knew that – alright, so everyone else was doing their shit and I went to do mine. Okay?” Jake tried to keep himself from jittering, but nervous energy bled out in the form of frustrated pacing. “How much did you – I know, when I came back and was hacking that night, you agreed with me, said I should. How much did you – see? There was only one window into the lab, and that was only in the doctor’s office, not in the – in the cages. Area. Thing.”

Hitching a shoulder up, Cougar ran his fingers over the bullets, the butt of the gun.

“Okay, well – well, I know you said I should do it, I thought maybe you saw something, but – but they were doing a lot of things, you know? They were trying to create – shit, I think they were trying to create sleeper agents, or something – I don’t _know_. I’m not a chemist, I’m a tech, and I don’t get what all the science jargon said or meant. It seemed like – some kind of biological warfare. They were taking some compound, making – making their test subjects’ metabolism superhumanly accelerated. Basically, really, really hungry. Like, ravenous. I mean – I mean in the notes they had, you couldn’t put two of the – of the victims together. They’d eat each other alive. Hell, they’d start – start eating their own flesh, they were that hungry. Take chunks out of—” He shuddered, forced his mind back on track. “Um. So, I saw that Fadhil’s name was – it came up, in connection to that formula. He was backing it, right? And he was supposed to distribute it, I guess to test it in the field? And we were sent to destroy Fadhil’s base, and be destroyed ourselves. I’m not sure why; maybe because we knew Fadhil, and knowing the name would let us look him up. Maybe it’s ‘cause Clay went off-mission so many times. Maybe – I don’t know, okay? That’s the whole fucking problem, _I don’t know_. I’m trying to figure it out, trying to pin down finances. I’ve been looking specifically into Fadhil’s money that went back into North America, specifically the United States but a few accounts that slipped into Canada, and I’m looking into a few European accounts, too, because that formula is either North American or European. There’s – I don’t know, a distinctive flair to Western-type bio-warfare, you know? You can tell, if a soldier’s been modified or messed with, he’s probably of Western origin. Eastern and African soldiers end up with tech, tools. They view the human body as sacred, you know? No messing with it, no introducing foreign compounds like our formula. Nothing like Procedural soldiers there. They’ve got stuff, though – it’s why the Middle East is such a hotspot, different factions and tribal powers trying to top one another. But they look down on us, ‘cause of what we are. Hated Procedurals – well, you’d know that. Sorry. Um.” Realizing his mouth had gotten away from him, that he’d touched on the unspoken year that Cougar had gone missing in Afghanistan, Jake twitched forward to try and apologize to Cougar.

Still, Cougar wasn’t doing more than watching Jake, hand moving over the gun as he put it back together, took it apart, and put it back together again, a steady motion that revealed in its own way Cougar’s nervousness at the moment. “I know this, Jake. But what is wrong _now_? Aisha or Roque said something that made you upset.”

Jake bit his lip. “I don’t know, Cougar. I have – no hard evidence, nothing to suggest that what I think is what’s really wrong. What’s really happening. I mean, there’s a bunch of other things that could be taking place and I just wouldn’t know—”

“Jake. _Amado_.”

Swallowing, Jake said hoarsely, “I think Aisha’s wrong. I think Max isn’t trying to buy next-gen weapons. I think – fuck, I think he’s behind their creation.”

For a moment, Cougar simply stared levelly at Jake, and then he let out a long breath. “Does this – affect anything right now?”

Jake wasn’t certain he heard Cougar right. “Um. What did you say?”

“This. If this is true. Will it matter, at the moment?”

“If we’re capturing some guy who’s been stockpiling and building up bio-warfare like us?” Jake laughed, incredulous. “I mean – what if he’s got, I dunno, this formula in, I dunno, gas form? What if – shit—”

“Jake.” Cougar slid the last piece of the gun in place, flicked the safety on, and moved over to Jake’s side, putting a hand on Jake’s upper arms and holding him still. “Will this information change any of our plans?”

Jake took in a deep breath. Shit, who knew? If Max had bodyguards that were hyped up on something? If Max had talents himself? If Max had contracts with other people, people who would come looking for him?

But all these were what-if situations, and Clay would need hard facts to deviate from the plan. Jake swallowed hard and shook his head. “No. No, Cougar.”

Rubbing a thumb over Jake’s shoulder, Cougar murmured, “We will tell the colonel. Just him, before we go. But it will not help to think about it right now, eh? Not right now.”

Jake licked his lips nervously. He could think of many, _many_ different ways this might affect the team, the plan, everything. But he couldn’t pin it down, couldn’t get evidence. Hell, all he had was vague ideas, and some ghoul-creating formula he’d tracked Fadhil’s money to. He had _nothing_.

“Okay.” Jake moved restlessly, shifting as if to pull away from Cougar’s grip but not wanting to fully do so, so he ended up just rocking on his heels. “Okay. But – Cougar, you shouldn’t be hiding things for me. I shouldn’t have done this.”

Cougar smirked a little, curled fingers around the back of Jake’s neck, and pulled Jake’s head down to his, kissing him gently on the lips. “You find the frequency to jam our trackers, you find your evidence, _amado_ , and together we will bring our enemy down.”

***

The next morning, Jake rolled out of his cot and pulled a gun up to train it on the man standing in his doorway. When his muddled head recognized Clay, he blushed and lowered the muzzle. “Sorry, colonel. Ah. Boss. Surprised me, is all.”

“Cougar mentioned you had something you wanted to tell me?” Clay said, closing the door behind him and leaning against it.

First thing in the morning? _Not_ something Jake wanted to do.

“Jensen.”

With a groan, Jake rubbed at his face, looking around. Cougar had fallen asleep with him, but the walls were too thin to really have sex without keeping everyone else awake, so it had just been mutual cuddling (which Jake would deny he loved to his deathbed); apparently, Cougar had snuck out earlier in the morning. Traitor, leaving Jake to face this alone. “Yeah, um… so there’s. Uh. A lot?”

“How much is ‘a lot’?” Clay asked, raising an eyebrow.

Jake glanced away from Clay, looking over at his laptop. Did he start from the beginning, from the research he’d done even after his trip to solitary and how that contributed to twenty-five dead kids? Did he come in at the end, with what Aisha said last night and how he had a niggling feeling that something more was up? Did he start from the middle, from when he’d traced Fadhil’s name to that formula?

End. End was good.

“Um. Well. I think – there might be more, to what Max is doing. Than just buying. You know?”

Clay looked at Jake oddly. “Okay. Why would you think that? What proof do you have?” He paused a moment, then shook his head. “And do you think this would affect today’s mission?”

Rubbing the back of his neck, Jake hitched one shoulder and scrabbled around in the duffle bag at his feet for a shirt to put on. “See, that’s the thing. I can think of a bunch of bio-warfare designs that would seriously fuck up the mission. I don’t know if they’ll be there. I don’t want to tell you to plan for that formula we saw, because if we do and then it doesn’t show up, I’ll feel stupid. I don’t know what the hell might be in Max’s convoy, if he has enhanced soldiers, if anything unusual will happen at all.”

Clay held his gaze steadily for a moment, then sighed. “Seemed like a short explanation for ‘a lot’ of stuff, but if you don’t think it’ll affect the mission—”

“I can’t promise it _won’t_ ,” Jake interrupted, standing up and searching around for a pair of jeans to pull on over his boxers.

After a moment, Clay nodded. “We’ll continue as if it won’t bother us. If anything fucks up, well, we’ll deal with it in-field. Alright?”

Jake nodded.

“Anything more you need to tell me?”

Wincing, Jake responded, “Not at this time?”

For another moment, Clay narrowed his eyes at Jake and glared. “If you’re withholding something, Jensen—”

“Not something that would affect the mission. Or affect – well, anything, really, except maybe team dynamics.” _‘Cause you would kick me out for being responsible for those kids’ deaths. The rest of the team would kick me out for being responsible for their exile from their home and families._

“Right. Okay. You’ll tell me later, then.”

“Sure. Later.”

Clay nodded and exited the room, just as Cougar slipped inside. Jake frowned severely at him.

“You abandoned me to Clay, you little fucker,” he snarled half-heartedly at Cougar as he dragged on the black pair of pants he’d need for the mission. Cougar made an amused sound and perched on the desk again.

“Yeah, you laugh now, but when you least expect it, I’m gonna get you back for that,” Jake promised.

Cougar made a motion at the laptop and cannibalized bits of radio.

“Did some more checking. Look, I think something bigger’s going on here and I’m not gonna stop now. Besides – I’m still trying to work out the frequency the trigger particles are at in us, in order to jam them so we can use our other forms. Not that they’d be useful for this mission.”

Cougar smirked and tilted his head at Jake, hat tilted rakishly.

“Don’t give me that. My horse is awesome, thank you. Now, if you excuse me, I have to go push a hot dog cart.”

***

The hot dog cart was one of the easier supplies for the mission to locate, and just as easy to fill up inside with electronics designated to jam radios and prevent calls for back-up when their targets inevitably would reach out, looking for those attacking them. It would also hold the crossbow and the quick-fix magnetic hold arrow that would keep the back doors closed of the truck Max was supposed to be traveling in. Only Jake had needed to get to downtown Miami early, in order to make himself blend in better and set up the jammer. Clay had instructed Aisha to fly with Pooch – perhaps because he knew how level-headed Pooch was, because frankly, Aisha was beginning to wear on Cougar by now and Roque, well, everyone on the team knew how Roque was taking to Aisha’s presence. Clay and Roque would show up with a grenade launcher and a gun with a dart loaded with C-4. Everything was moving according to plan. And if Jake was taking little breaks to see whether or not his encryption was loading, well, it wasn’t as if people wanted hot dogs at ten in the morning.

“Jensen, are we wired?”

Jake swallowed around the bite he’d taken (Jake had mourned the loss of meat, and been fiercely jealous that Cougar’s cougar didn’t keep him from eating chocolate, so long as Cougar didn’t transform while the chocolate was still in his digestive tract). “Max is westbound,” he confirmed. “Would you believe that these soy hot dogs taste de _lic_ ious?”

Roque snorted into the mic and Jake made a face. Yeah, he didn’t believe it all that much, either.

At least Aisha’s intel was correct, and the convoy was heading in the correct direction, towards Jake. Jake rubbed his hands, stowed the electronics quickly into a duffle bag without disconnecting the wires or messing up their function, and moved around the cart to look down the street as the blinking police lights came into view. Thankfully, it wasn’t a high traffic time of day; ten am, most people were still in their offices, especially in the business district of downtown. Not a lot of civilians walking meant less civilian casualties, especially considering what they intended to do to the convoy.

Now, Jake just needed to maneuver his cart around to the perfect opening. Pooch and Aisha would be coming past that skyscraper this direction, and Cougar was supposed to be on top of the BBVA Compass building over on _that_ side of the street, and Roque and Clay were coming from the side in whatever car they’d stolen to pick up Jake, so ideally, Jake should be right about…

Before he could move, there was an explosion – Cougar hitting the wheel or gas tanks of the SUVs in front and in back of the convoy. There was an extra car, a Jeep with a tarp-covered back, and Jake tried not to think about what could be hiding under that tarp as he watched the front and back of the convoy blocked by the cars Cougar had hit.

Then suddenly Wade was out, and Jake dropped his head and averted his eyes. He knew Wade, and Wade would recognize him if he looked over here and saw Jake’s face. Now was as good a time as any to move, and he watched the tarp be pulled off the Jeep (just an M2 .50 anti-aircraft gun, and god it must be sad that he was _okay_ with it being an anti-aircraft gun and not, say, a bio-weapon of some type) and soldiers came out, armed to the teeth. There were the requisite screams, exclamations of shock, civilians cowering away, and now that he looked to the traffic backing up on the side, he thought he could see car doors opening. Ah. Clay with the grenade launcher.

Smoke-and-pepper-gas grenade, of course, just to lower visibility and reaction times.

“Masks on!” he could hear Wade yelling in his battlefield voice and _shit_ , why were they prepared for something like this? At least not everyone had one – Wade, for one. Wade’s visibility should be like shit then, because that was highly concentrated pepper spray in those canisters. Hell, Wade should be sneezing up a storm – he was a pre-wave Procedural, had the initial tests all done to him, so his senses should be souped up like Cougar’s and Jake’s.

And yet, Wade stood there as Pooch and Aisha made their entrance, and didn’t blink an eye. Didn’t cough, didn’t breathe hard, and he glared at the helicopter.

His eyes flashed yellow.

Jake’s horse perked up and noticed. _Not human_ , it whispered in the back of his mind. _Other._

Well, _fuck_.

Then Jake noticed Roque, and Roque was supposed to be doing a better job hiding that detonator, _really_ , there were people around who could ID them if they knew what to pay attention to and Clay was already waving his ass around with that grenade launcher and could everyone please stick to the plan, pretty please with cherries on top? Jake rolled his eyes and planted the cart down, making sure everything was good to go, making sure the jammer was still up and running even tucked in the duffle bag, and all he needed was the final mark—

Shooting. They were shooting at the helicopter, when it was supposed to give them pause. Jake’s back went up and he knew it, knew something was wrong about this, and if he could just pin it down where he saw Wade’s inhuman motions and reactions…

And right then, explosion, and Jake’s horse startled, surprising him enough that he took two steps back from the cart as if to flee. _Shit_. Needed to keep his head in the game, needed to figure all this out, needed to take everything in and make a note of it and report it _later_ , when Pooch and Aisha weren’t praying the helicopter would hold against the machine guns and nothing would disrupt the magnet being lowered.

 _There_. There. Final mark, magnet connected, and Jake yanked the duffle bag out from the inside of the cart, all the electronics stowed, brought the crossbow up to bear because this had to be instantaneous, had to go off without letting those doors open. “That’s right, bitches,” he breathed as he sighted for half a second. “I got a crossbow.” And he loosed.

Everything went _perfectly_ – in fact, the magnetic lock was even _centered_ holy _shit_ and Jake was riding the adrenaline now, eyes bright and shining and everything was working, everyone was okay, and Cougar would meet them at the bottom of the building. Snatching the duffle bag up, he abandoned the hot dog cart and jogged into the street, unnoticeable in the sea of civilians trying to get away from the fire, and his horse was steady now, accepting of the destruction as Pooch and Aisha lifted the truck up, took away the vehicle holding Max, and even when Wade jumped onto the Jeep and _threw_ the man behind the anti-aircraft gun fifteen feet across the street, aimed with unerring accuracy, they still made it out.

Roque and Clay were congratulating themselves, Jake was ecstatic in the back, and Cougar was as happy, smug and eyes alight with good humor because shit, everything went like clockwork. Sure, a few hiccups, some minor deviations from the script, and certainly Jake would have to speak to Cougar and Clay about Wade, because Wade didn’t act right for someone only human, but everything was okay, they were fine, _they had Max_.

***

Except, in fact, they didn’t.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah... So it's still at 116k words. Grad school is effectively leaching my ability to write. I have, however, outlined (in meticulous detail) where I want the story to go and how it will end. I hope to have another 3k written by tonight, though.
> 
> And. Um. Another scene that is *mature* but not explicit. I hope. If it's explicit go ahead and tell me so I can change the rating!
> 
> Next week, posting schedule will be changing to Mondays and Wednesdays so that I'm not posting it this late. >.

Cougar ran a hand through Jensen’s hair, watching Aisha in the front seat carefully. They had two separate cars on the way to Houston, where Goliath’s main office was stationed, and while normally it would be two and three to a car – or, with Aisha’s presence, three to a car – everyone except Roque was riding in this Jeep. Roque had made it clear that he wanted to be on his own, and while Cougar didn’t think it was a good idea, Clay seemed strangely okay with it. Strangely okay with – with everything that had just happened in the past twenty-four hours. They’d burned everything, packed up the necessary gear and arms, shoved Aisha in the passenger seat, shoved Clay in the seat the farthest away from her, and Pooch took driver and Jensen took the middle seat.

Which left Cougar to stare at the back of Aisha’s head on the bench seat next to Jensen.

When the shit had hit the fan, Roque had been the one to take Aisha and tie her up, sitting her on a crate by the table. Jensen had taken the hard drive, plugged it into the laptop, and run a bunch of diagnostics on it that had taken almost twenty minutes – fifteen minutes longer than normal. Finally, he had let out a sigh and rubbed his temple. “Without a decryption key, you’re looking at a really cool paperweight,” he had admitted, and he had sounded so defeated that Cougar had to keep his arms braced against the table to keep from reaching out and resting a hand on Jensen’s shoulder comfortingly. Across the table, Pooch had been massaging his temples and Roque – well, Roque had been eager to dispense of Aisha. Not that Cougar could blame him – Aisha had gotten what she’d wanted and put them all in a very bad spot. Wade had, for some reason, recognized Pooch and any advantage they had of surprise was lost. Nothing good could come out of it, and Clay’s order to burn all the evidence and get rid of Aisha hadn’t been a surprise.

That Clay had stopped, and actually _listened_ to Aisha when she’d spouted some bullshit about leverage… Cougar could understand why Jensen had volunteered the information. First, of course, was the obvious motive of guilt that Cougar would bet Jensen felt just as strongly, if not more strongly, than Clay. But beyond that, even though he wasn’t as a pack – or, in Jensen’s case, a herd – animal as the army had wanted, Jensen would do anything for the team. The herd was important to Jensen, and as much as Jensen would casually ignore boundaries and societal norms, he rarely disobeyed direct orders. Clay had been – shit, Clay _still was_ – all over the place with his emotions. Frustration, sex, desire, disappointment, fury, weariness, guilt, loathing; almost every negative emotion Cougar could think of, Clay had been smelling of it then and was still smelling of it now. Jensen was trying too hard to keep up with everyone’s needs and wants on a computer – trying to do his own hacking into what Max might be up to, trying to locate and create a completely new persona for Roque, trying to find a satellite feed for Pooch, trying to get messages to Jolene and Emily, Jensen’s sister. Trying to look into Aisha and getting practically nothing. Trying to locate a jammer or a disrupter that would allow both him and Jensen to transform to their animals without showing up immediately on a satellite feed and alerting the nearest army base that two Procedurals transformed off-base and without permission. Jensen had too many things going on at once and it was running him ragged, because his horse needed to come out now. Stress made their animals antsy, and they were in the mother of all stressful situations.

So Jensen had been trying to give Clay an option that made things easy for them. He’d been trying to give Clay an option that would allow Clay to do what he wanted. The problem was that Cougar wasn’t certain this was the best thing anymore. This was looking more and more like Clay’s personal vendetta and not something that benefitted the team as a whole.

And Aisha – Aisha put Cougar’s back up. She was scarily competent with weapons, and he respected her power, but there were stories from his childhood about _brujas_ , those with power that could manipulate the world and people around them with ease. He didn't think Aisha was a _bruja_ – he had checked, with what limited amount of information he remembered about tests from the stories – or at least, wasn’t one he could detect. But she was… off. Wrong, in the way that Wade had been wrong. Something else was out there, and Cougar knew that the army had only scratched the surface of that other world with the formula that let certain soldiers shape-shift. As much as the scientists claimed it was simple formula that bonded with DNA and ran their body through some kind of process… no way that Jensen, who, yes, was more muscled than Cougar and Cougar was not ashamed to admit he liked the fact that Jensen could manhandle him if it came down to it—

Jensen twisted his head in Cougar’s lap, looking up at Cougar and smiling slightly. Cougar elected to keep his face completely stoic and ignore his dick that chose now of all times to get interested in his line of thought.

—But, though Jensen was muscled, there was no way a simple (as if it could ever be simple) DNA change would allow Jensen to suddenly put on seven to eight hundred more pounds, and then shed them just that quickly. There was some other element here, and it would be easier to accept Clay’s inordinate fascination with Aisha if some magical element was involved.

…Of course, Clay really could be that stupid over a woman. Which brought Cougar back to Roque, and Roque’s words.

_“Enough of this revenge bullshit.”_

_“We’re fugitives. Because of you.”_

And then Clay had punched Roque in the nose.

Jensen and Pooch, the two closest at the time because Cougar had taken files over to their gear, had gotten between Clay and Roque and Cougar had rushed back to grab ahold of Aisha, who’d been edging away. Jensen had looked torn, uncertain, trying to grab Clay’s arms and shove him back, except Jensen really was a kid, even if he was a couple years older than Cougar, and Clay had shoved him easily to the side. Pooch was more tenacious, perhaps because Pooch, like Cougar, had been around Roque longer and knew how to keep Roque’s attention and how to hold him back when he launched himself at someone. Pooch had pointed out that they no longer were ghosts, people knew they were alive which meant that said people would be looking for them. Even if Jensen had been able to create new profiles for them (and Jensen had been close; being in the United States gave him better opportunities and faster wifi, even if he complained that the laptops he was getting were pieces of shit) those identities wouldn’t last long.

_“She framed us. Are you guys blind? She framed us!”_

Cougar had agreed one hundred percent.

That didn’t change the fact that Roque didn’t want to be anywhere near Aisha, Aisha seemed extremely smug which didn’t sit well with Cougar at all, Jensen seemed even more ragged than normal, and Pooch was tired, weary. And Cougar himself?

He was debating walking out.

Oh, he wanted revenge, that was a given. In fact, he was pretty certain that he and Clay wanted revenge more than all the rest of the team. But he didn’t want to do it at the expense of others. He didn’t want to drag Pooch and Jensen into it, not when they had families to go back to and reassure. Having guys on the mission that didn’t believe in the mission was only going to invite trouble and end in trouble for the entire operation.

As it stood, though, he still saw Clay as his colonel, his commanding officer. He still accepted Clay as head of their pack-unit, just as Jensen saw Clay as the head of the herd. He would stick with this until it was absolutely proven that there was no way to get to Max, and that there were other options on the table besides revenge. What was throwing him and making him question whether Clay had his head on straight was Aisha.

He’d have to bring it up to Jensen, have Jensen stop sending out all those different lines of inquiry and have Jensen focus in on just two or three leads at a time. And he wanted Jensen to look into Aisha as closely as possible, get some readings off of her, as well as readings on the formula that made them what they were. Perhaps that would give them a bit more answers about this new biological warfare that Max seemed intent on creating. Or buying. Whichever verb turned out to be correct.

Jensen sighed in Cougar’s lap. The hacker was twisted on the middle seat in the Jeep so that he was slumped over on top of Cougar – uncomfortable, Cougar would think, but Jensen had the spine of a cat even if the form of a horse. He was tactile, too, and Cougar did his best not to forget that considering what had happened the last time Jensen had bottled something up inside.

They were only about two hours from Houston, sun setting on the horizon, when their gas tank needed filling up, and then Jensen sidled over to Cougar and jerked his chin in the direction of Clay and Aisha. Clay was grabbing some jerky and paying for it inside, and Aisha just waited for Clay by the door, her head moving with Clay. Watching.

“Don’t like how Aisha… acts,” Jensen murmured as he leaned with Cougar against the side of the car. Pooch was in the can, and Cougar was left to be the one pumping the gas. Jensen had a small handheld identifier that he was fooling around with.

Cougar simply nodded, his cowboy hat dipping. At least in Texas it wouldn’t stand out as much as it would have in Miami. Not that either him or Jensen were going to be wandering down the city streets, really – well, if Clay’s plan worked right, Jensen would be, but normally Jensen and Cougar were set away from the action, overseeing it from afar. Cougar didn’t like how exposed Jensen would be on this mission. No one else would even be involved except for Cougar, providing ground cover for the doors, and Pooch, providing the getaway car. Oh, Clay would most likely be in the car, overseeing the op, but Aisha and Roque were superfluous for this op. They’d probably be unpacking gear at their new base of operations…

Well. Roque would be, or Aisha. Not the both of them together. Hopefully Clay wouldn’t be so stupid as to suggest they’d use the ‘alone time’ to get to know one another better. Roque was barely handling as it was.

“So she has this tattoo on her arm, did you see? Right at the inside of her elbow. Kinda like a Dark Mark.”

Cougar tilted his head enough so that Jensen could see his quirked eyebrow.

“Long story about wizards and magic and Muggles. Difficult to explain. Raina loves the series. But. Anyway. It was a tattoo that identified all the members of a cult, right?”

Cougar thought having a tattoo that would identify you was part of a cult was probably not all that smart, not if you wanted your membership to be hidden – which was implied in the connotations of cult – but held his tongue (like normal) and instead waited for Jensen to reach the point.

“Okay, so, I was looking up what Aisha’s tattoo could mean, because it looked vaguely Arabic, you know? Only it doesn’t have any real meaning. It’s just letters thrown together, and that first letter doesn’t even look like a letter. Granted, I only got a short glimpse of it because, really, trying not to stare too hard because you’d kill me and then Clay would kill me. But – I mean. The tattoo has no real meaning. So. So I was looking, in the car ride, for other tattoos that would be similar, and I pinged on some super-secret sect or something that’s active in Egypt and Libya and I’ve been trying to get a better grip on it but all I can tell is that it refers to some idea of soothsayers. Didn’t think that shit was legal in those countries, but there you go.”

Cougar poked Jensen in the ribs.

“Okay, okay, getting to the point – I mean, the tattoo and the eye piercing are really the only identifying marks. And so I’m trying to figure out if there’s a real connection to the sect or if she just liked the idea of it like any stupid teenager does and so decided to permanently ink herself.” Tapping nervous fingers on the metal door, Jensen dropped his gaze. “And I guess I just wanted to know what you think. Because I’m fairly certain Roque’s not happy I pointed out that I could hack the hard drive if I had access to the mainframe at Goliath Worldwide.” Pausing a moment, Jensen admitted slowly, “I could hack it even without that access, but that hack would take me at least a month, maybe two, to set up a dummy server and build the correct blinds and run the correct coding and algorithms to trick the hard drive into recognizing the dummy server as the equivalent to Goliath Worldwide’s main server.”

Cougar hung up the gas nozzle and screwed the cap shut over the gas tank. Should he talk about this now, with Aisha and Clay exiting the gas station and Pooch coming over? Later seemed like the best bet, and while he hated keeping secrets from the rest of the team, some of what Jensen said would make Pooch and Roque too volatile without actually affecting Clay any, so the rift in the team would only grow. The other part – well, it was Jensen’s choice whether or not to inform the team that it was his hacking that had led to the order for their elimination.

Jensen followed Cougar’s line of gaze and shut up, head dropping low and shoulders curling inwards. He felt bad about outright defying both Clay and Roque within ten minutes of each other and Cougar couldn’t offer comfort with Aisha staring. She already seemed far too interested in their lives to be healthy.

***

They stopped in a factory yard on the outskirts of Houston, Roque already there waiting for them. He’d ditched the small Mazda for an RV as well as, apparently, locating a hideous old van with curtains and fabric seats.

“You gotta be kidding me,” Jensen muttered under his breath.

Cougar smiled, lips quirking up at the corner as he stretched his limbs and hefted his bag and gear that was stacked on the ground in front of Roque. Roque didn’t wait to see Clay or Aisha get out of the car – simply turned on his heel and went to an old crate that slid open to reveal a cot and a few other pieces of furniture. The door slammed closed behind him.

With a frustrated growl, Clay turned on his heel and made his way to the small overseer cabin at the top of a rusty stairway. Aisha watched him go with calculating eyes and then disappeared herself.

Pooch, Cougar, and Jensen stared at one another.

With a sigh, Pooch rubbed the back of his head. “Alright, look, Jensen – you’ll be leaving early tomorrow morning, right?” At Jensen’s nod, Pooch gestured to the gear still piled outside the van. “Let’s move most of this to the RV – since we won’t need everything, and it should be safe here on its own. We need to get the comms into the van, though, and the rest into the Jeep that you’ll drive into the city tomorrow. Not enough room to change in the Jeep, though, so you’ll have to change into your gear in a bathroom along the way or something. The rest of us will get the van – we’ll look like a family on vacation. Tourists.”

“Homicidal tourists,” Jensen muttered, but there was a grin there – weak, but there.

Pooch chuckled, slapping Jensen’s back. “That’s the spirit. We gotta stick together if our collective leaders are gonna have their heads stuck up their asses.”

With an amiable nod, Cougar bent down and began stacking the gear in the backseat of the van, while Jensen hunted around for his laptop. “I miss military-grade laptops,” Jensen sighed. “Think I can get Aisha to spring for a better one? This one runs for shit and it needs three external hard drives just to get some of the most basic searches done…”

“Basic for you, maybe,” Pooch grunted. “We’re cutting corners here, having to make do, so not right now. Maybe if we pull off this job Clay will abandon this or Roque will lighten up. That’ll put _someone_ in a good enough mood that you can ask.”

“Yeah…” Jensen sighed, hefting two crates of ammunition and sliding them onto the floor. “You want me to set up that satellite link? I think I managed to isolate all the spyware focused in on Jolene, so…”

Pooch slid the last of the gear into the van and turned to look at Jensen and Cougar. Cougar hefted a shoulder, indicating that he didn’t know if it’d be successful any more than Pooch himself did. A heartbeat or two later, Pooch shook his head regretfully. “We’ve been made. They’ll have doubled their attention on her. I don’t want to put her or my kid at risk, not when I can watch and – and have things sent to the house. Can we do that, at least? Have something sent to the house?”

Jensen gnawed on his lip a bit, tapping fingers against his thigh, before nodding. “Shouldn’t look too suspicious, as long as I can find a plausible reason for it to come, maybe set up a dummy account… What do you want to send?”

Pooch smiled faintly. “It was our anniversary, yesterday. Want to send her some flowers – she likes lilies.”

“How about some chrysanthemums?” Jensen offered. “Red and white ones.”

Pooch raised an eyebrow at Jensen, even as Cougar turned to look at the tech.

Jensen shrugged one shoulder. “Means long life. Love. Joy.”

“Jolene doesn’t know the meaning of flowers,” Pooch replied, but he was thinking about it, Cougar could tell.

“Yeah, well… Okay, lilies? White ones, right? I’ll get it sent out to her tomorrow morning if you give it to me before I leave.”

Nodding in agreement, Pooch glanced at the crate Roque had disappeared in and sighed. “I’m sleeping in the backseat of that sweet-ass van. You guys gonna be alright?”

“When are we not?” Jensen offered, and there was his old devil-may-care smile and smirk. Cougar couldn’t help smiling in response, though he was pretty certain what Jensen needed right now was not something more to do on computers but to actually rest and relax. As Pooch crawled into the van, Cougar tugged Jensen over to a stack of crates (a decent amount of space away from the one Roque claimed, because as much as Cougar was certain he could defend himself against Roque, he didn’t really want to be interrupted) and smiled winningly at Jensen before climbing up the sides of the crates.

Jensen lifted an eyebrow, hefting the bag of his gear he’d kept separate from what they’d packed into the Jeep onto his shoulder. “Up there, Cougs?”

Cougar paused in his climbing and narrowed his eyes at Jensen.

“Alright, alright, I’m coming.” With a sigh, Jensen grabbed onto the side and pulled himself up after Cougar. Times like these, Cougar appreciated the strength in the hacker’s arms, the smooth glide of muscle and limbs in a coordinated effort. For all that Jensen could be clumsy, and goofy, and more likely to bring a laptop to a fight than a gun, he was a special forces operative and _damn_ , Cougar loved when it showed.

Not that he’d told Jensen that straight out, but from Jensen’s quirky, secret smile, he was certain Jensen could guess.

On the top of the crates, Cougar put down his own bag and unrolled a sleeping bag. Jensen made a groaning noise and shook his head. “Dude, I don’t want to get eaten alive by mosquitos. Mosquitos in Texas are, like, the size of fucking hummingbirds. Which is pretty big for a mosquito, considering they’re barely dots everywhere else sane.”

Cougar glowered at Jensen and Jensen grunted before taking out his own sleeping bag. With a frustrated sigh, Cougar took that from Jensen and tugged Jensen down, piling his duffle bag and Jensen’s bag behind them so that Jensen could sit propped up. Before Jensen could say his thanks and whip out his laptop, Cougar sat down between Jensen’s legs and leaned his head back.

“Cougs, I gotta figure out how to get white lilies sent to Jolene tomorrow – well, okay, today—”

“Shhh.”

Jensen shifted uneasily. “Cougar – man, I have to—”

Cougar turned around, shifting so he could kneel between Jensen’s thighs, eyes dark. “Jake.”

Jensen – _Jake_ , Cougar corrected himself mentally, _if I am going to initiate an intimate moment his name is Jake_ – shivered and dropped his head. “Yeah, Cougar?” he said, voice dry.

“Out here, do you see the stars?”

For a moment, it didn’t look like Jake understood what Cougar was trying to say, and then he tilted his head backwards, looking up into the sky. “I – yeah, I see them. Why?”

“When I was little,” Cougar murmured, resting his hands on Jake’s shoulders and letting his fingers caress the material of the cotton t-shirt, “I would go outside with my sister. She and I, we would climb onto the roof of our garage and just – lie back. Look at the stars.”

He kept his voice soft, hypnotic, almost, and was rewarded when tension began bleeding out of Jake’s shoulders. Not giving Jake time to speak, he continued, “Looking at the stars, we would see how – how small we are. How everything will keep moving, even if we were standing still.”

Jake dropped his head again to catch Cougar’s gaze, and there was a bleakness there along with knowledge, grudging acceptance, and uneasiness. Cougar held Jake’s gaze steadily and whispered, “I believe Max should pay. There is no doubt in my mind about that. But I believe the team must live, too, and that is stronger than revenge. If you were to leave – if you were to follow Roque, and pull out of this, I would follow you, Jake.”

Jake’s breath caught in his throat, and he finally broke their gaze to lick his lips nervously. “I don’t want to ask you to choose, Cougar – because you’d have to, wouldn’t you? I know you want Max to pay. I get – I get why Clay’s upset, you know? And it’s not even his fault, not like it’s mine—”

“It is _not_ yours, _amado_ – we discussed this.”

With a soft laugh, Jake nodded, though his eyes remained resigned. “Yeah, we did. Still, if I hadn’t been poking around—”

“Another team would have been sent to dispose of the operation. You already know for certain that Fadhil knew about Max, or about the chemical weapons that Max was developing. Fadhil would have died one way or another. It would simply have been another’s hand on the trigger, and those children would have died in the compound instead of outside of it.” Cougar leaned forward, brushing the tip of his nose against Jake’s nose. “It is _not your fault_ , Jake, and I will repeat that as often as you need.”

Licking his lips, Jake stared up into Cougar’s eyes for a long moment before dropping his head again. “Okay, well, even with that, I mean – I feel responsible too, you know? I – I get it, man, why Roque’s so upset, why he wants us to stop it, now. Aisha’s bad news, and I keep coming back with nothing on her, nothing from anyone besides a grudge, and I can’t figure out why. I’m trying to find out who’s backing her, who put her in our path or put us in hers, but she’s bad news and the last thing I want to do is help her. But – I feel responsible. Max deserves to pay, or at least deserves to have his credit score ruined.” At the ghost of the joke, Jake’s mouth twitched faintly. “You know?”

Cougar reached up to take off his hat and set it on the crate besides their bags. “ _Entiendo_. But Jake – if it becomes too much, too long… I will not think less of you. This is not your fight.”

“Kinda think it is,” Jake said with a sigh, leaning his head back again and closing his eyes.

There was no more perfect an invitation than that, and so Cougar dropped his hands to Jake’s waist, running fingers up under the shirt and against Jake’s abs, even as he lowered his lips to Jake’s. There was a little noise of surprise from Jake, his eyes popping back open, and he instinctively reached up and his hands landed on Cougar’s ass.

Cougar couldn’t help purring.

A moment later, Jake laughed hoarsely, voice rough and thick. “Yeah, okay, that’s fucking awesome. I’m down for this.”

It was slow, sweet and gentle in a way that it hadn’t been for a long time. There, under the stars, a silver sheen of light flowing over Jake’s muscles and abdomen, painting thighs and calves as Cougar licked his way over and around Jake’s shadowed groin – Jake kept his hands gentle, soft and caressing in Cougar’s hair as he gasped and groaned and writhed. There were times that Cougar took Jake, and Jake took Cougar, but this time Cougar took Jake by being taken, rising up to his knees above Jake’s cock and sliding down, oh-so-slowly, letting the burn of too little prep make Cougar _feel_ Jake in a way that he missed. Jake moaned and sighed and his breath would hitch and jump erratically, eyes fluttering shut before wrenching back open, obviously unwilling to miss the sight of Cougar arched in front of him, gasping his own pleasure and fisting his own cock in the watery light of the stars.

When they were done, Cougar curled on top of Jake’s chest and Jake’s softening cock still buried in Cougar’s ass, Jake pressed a soft kiss to the top of Cougar’s head.

“I love you, Carlos.”

Cougar blinked in surprise, lifting his head to stare at Jake in shock. But Jake wasn’t looking at him; Jake was looking up at the stars, eyes half-lidded and falling closed.

“I love you, and I don’t care if you say it back quietly or say it back wordlessly or never say it back at all, but this mission has such a huge fucking risk of us never walking away from it and – I just want you to be clear. This isn’t – this is serious, for me. And I’m gonna go tomorrow, and I’m gonna carry out this insane plan and maybe we’ll find dirt on Max, maybe we won’t, but that – that’s not going to change at all.”

Cougar – didn’t know what to say. Really, he’d done this with the sole intention of making Jake relax, of pulling him away from those computers that he was so wrapped up in now, and there Jake went, reassuring Cougar, making Cougar unsettled again, and all Cougar could do was trace the outline of his name over Jake’s chest, running fingers through the bristly hair over Jake’s pecs and nuzzling at Jake’s throat.

“Besides, I think I’m the one saying it a little late, you know?” Jake said, and his words were slurred as he began to drift off. “I’ve been hearing you say it for a long time.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, rating's changed for the last chapter, and I feel better about changing the posting schedule because this is so freaking late in the afternoon and my brain is just fried from alternatively being bored to death and expected to keep up in a class where I have apparently no idea what's going on.
> 
> Word count's at 119k, so yay, made my tiny goal. I don't even know anymore guys. Writing this last bit has been horrible and I think it's in part because now I feel like I'm making characters ooC as I move away from canon and in part because a scene needed to happen but I didn't know how to go about actually writing it, so. There will probably be a horrible chapter later on, just saying, and it will be because I don't even want to think about that chapter anymore.
> 
> Thank you all for your lovely comments, and next update will be the 17th and 19th instead of 18th and 20th!

Pooch wasn’t the first one up – that was always going to be Cougar, and if Cougar smelled of sex and looked particularly pleased with himself, and if, when Jensen woke up, he had a dopey smile on his face, well, it wasn’t Pooch’s place to say anything at all about it, it really wasn’t. Pooch just made sure Jensen had everything he needed for his mission, and then handed over the keys to the van. Jensen would need to change and get into position, steal a bike and buy a disposable cell phone as well as find a place to hide the mike that would let Jensen communicate with Clay and Pooch in the car, and so Jensen was leaving early. Cougar had found an old crick a ways off, and had washed the scent off of him, and Pooch had taken advantage of it to clean up a bit himself. All in all, he was in a fairly good mood when he climbed into the driver’s seat of the van and watched Cougar buckle in next to him. Roque had gotten up and was as surly now as he was last night, but Pooch was determined not to let anyone destroy his mood. Jensen was damn good at these kinds of missions, and Cougar would be in the office building on the opposite side of the street, in a janitor’s closet to cover the entrance so Jensen could get out cleanly. Roque and Aisha and Clay were going to be in the car with Pooch, waiting to drive off with Jensen, and Cougar would get the Jeep and drive it back to their newest base of operations. Everything would run _smooth_.

Aisha and Clay entered the van, and it was clear that they had _not_ found that crick that Cougar had found to wash the scent of sex off of them.

“Oh, _wow_ ,” Roque said sarcastically from the backseat of the van. “That’s just… _peachy_.”

No way. Pooch was _not_ going to have Roque rain on this parade right now. He wasn’t going to have a scowling Clay, either, if it came down to it. Turning around in his seat – Cougar was turning too, eyeing Aisha with something that looked a lot like disdain, but Pooch wasn’t going to judge – he said bluntly, “We’re not going anywhere until you two squash this _bullshit_.”

Cougar lifted an eyebrow at him but Pooch ignored skeptical-Cougar to focus on Clay and Roque – ignoring Aisha, who just sat there and looked smug.

“We’re on a schedule here,” Clay grunted, seconded by Roque in the back saying, “Yeah.”

Really? They were going to fuck with his good mood? “Oh, we’re on a schedule,” Pooch mimicked Clay (badly, he’d admit) before turning around and dropping the keys onto the tray.

“What are you doing?” Roque snarled, but Pooch had a lot of experience getting recalcitrant Clays and Roques to work together. Granted, nothing beat a long drinking session with them both staggering back to base leaning on each other’s shoulder, but this would have to do. Pooch did his best to keep the team running smoothly and he took that job seriously. It was always him who kept an eye on the team dynamics. Roque and Clay both knew this, so Clay let out an aggrieved sigh.

“Roque…” Clay started to turn around, saw Aisha raising her eyebrow (really, Pooch felt he should buck her from the van and let them sort it out without her silent input because Clay and Roque really weren’t acting all that normal around one another with her around, even when taking into account how Roque and Clay interacted when Clay found crazy women to sleep with), and turned back to face Pooch. “I’m sorry I hit you in the face.”

If looks could kill. Pooch grinned widely, showing a bit too much teeth to really be a smile of happiness but could pass for it in a pinch. “That was good,” he said genially. “That was good. Roque?”

Roque glared out the side window.

“Roque?” Pooch repeated, letting the almost impossible-to-pick-up edge drop into his voice, letting Roque know he was not fucking around.

Heaving a sigh, Roque growled, “Clay… I’m sorry I threatened to cut your head off.”

There. Apology given, and message given. Stop dicking around on the mission, and act like a team. Pooch grinned, smile softening. They might not like one another at the moment, but they’d gotten the message. “ _Very_ good. Wow. Don’t you two feel so much better?”

Next to him, Cougar smirked and twisted his head. Aisha looked fed up with their bullshit, and Roque and Clay agreed wholeheartedly, “ _No_.”

Aisha’s mouth quirked up in a smile, even as Pooch refrained from chuckling like a madman by a very narrow margin. “I don’t give a shit,” he informed the other two men gleefully, “because _I do_.” Picking up the keys, he looked over at Cougar, who was hiding his grin at the antics of Roque and Clay in the ducked motion of his head and a quiet smirk. “Now, I say we go watch Jensen get himself killed.” Slapping lightly on Cougar’s shoulder, he invited Cougar to smile along with him. “Yup?”

Cougar let out a huff of breath and bumped fists with him. Thoroughly pleased with himself, Pooch started the car.

***

Everything seemed to be fine, really. Yeah, Jensen had cocked up the endgame, but Cougar was adaptable and with Clay shouting orders for Cougar to get up ten more stories in order to be able to cover Jensen by the north elevators, everything went well. In fact, it could be argued that Cougar had started moving up those stories the minute he’d heard the exchange between Jensen and the secretary. Certainly, Cougar had taken care of the security guards, and Jensen had gotten down the elevators and managed to sneak out an emergency exit without running into any other security guards. Five minutes after Jensen had gotten out of the building, Cougar was strolling casually out of the building on the opposite side of the street and piling into the van with the rest of them. It turned out Cougar had even managed to find a janitor’s closet on the floor he’d had to relocate to, no one had paid particular attention to his movements, and everything went so goddamn smoothly it could have been a Reese’s Cup, Pooch would swear.

And Roque hadn’t poked at Clay, and Clay had kept his interactions with Aisha minimal, and Aisha herself was just sitting in the middle seat with her legs crossed, silent and not offering any input. Really, what could make this more perfect?

Finding out they had four hundred million dollars in their hands might just be the icing on a sweet, sweet cake. Pooch wanted a jet, like, _yesterday_. A jet would mean no more worries about being stranded in countries or weird things like passports. Ignoring the problem of fuel, everything else was golden. After all, they had a tech who could hack airport security in his sleep to build a flight plan that would allow them to land, and if they wanted they could get a jet that could do more… _untraditional_ landings which would guarantee them freedom from touching down in a public or private landing strip. It was _brilliant_.

“Ah, it doesn’t work _that_ way,” Jensen cautioned, even as Roque frowned against a pole and Clay grinned to himself. “Unfortunately, courier drives can only load and unload on their home systems.”

“We’re gonna trade it back to him,” Roque interrupted, and everyone turned to look at him as he walked forward, grabbing Clay’s gaze and holding it, eyes hard. “He’s gonna get his money and clear our names.”

Well, great, there went the smoothness of the day. Of course, Aisha immediately interjected, because she had a hard-on for Max that rivaled Clay’s and really, how had she found out about Max when all of Jensen’s hacking couldn’t find a shadow of this man? What was her connection to the guy that set them up? It was as suspicious as hell, but Pooch wasn’t going to say anything at all at this point. Surely Jensen, who was a genius even if he didn’t act like it most of the time, had figured out the discrepancies with her story and her intel. Pooch didn’t need to throw more oil on this already raging fire that was going on beneath the surface.

Clay took a step forward, voice rough and quiet at the same time. “He’s gotta kill us now. You know that.”

And really, Roque did know that. Hell, they all knew that. Why would Max bargain for something that was his, that had always been his? He wouldn’t – he’d take it and double-cross them. Max didn’t even have to kill them, simply sell them out to the government and laugh as they sat in jail for the rest of their lives or were executed for the falsified war crimes on their records. Nothing they did now would touch Max. They couldn’t even use the four hundred million, realistically. Guys like Max would probably have a back-up stash somewhere, and ways of tracking the hard drive if it ever got loaded onto a system. It made sense. With a sigh, Pooch leaned against a stack of crates, staring out across the factory grounds and the RV parked nearby. Nothing they did seemed to get them closer to their goal, or to any checkpoint, even.

“This thing has a record of every IP address it’s been jacked into,” Jensen said suddenly. “And – there’s one address that comes up a lot.”

Roque turned his back on Clay and walked away a few steps, shoulders tense. Pooch watched Roque worriedly even as Jensen continued, “Obviously, some place this keeps going back to.”

Clay jumped on that like a dog on a bone, which was probably what Jensen had been aiming for. Jensen had been trying to facilitate Clay’s crazy quest the whole way through, trying to offer help where he could, and honestly, Pooch was getting a little tired of it. He was tired of acting like being on US soil didn’t change the fact that they were operating behind enemy lines. He just wanted to get back to Jolene, get back to the family he had started and now might never see finished.

“Port of Los Angeles,” Jensen offered, and then scratched his head, looking up at Clay. “Thing probably has files on every black-book op he’s ever pulled.”

_Including Bolivia._

“We hit him there, we could clear it out,” Jensen said, and excitement began to bleed into his voice. “Expose the _world_ to what he’s done.”

“Clear our names in the process,” Clay said with satisfaction.

Roque leaned his hip against the table, glancing around their group – Pooch noticed Cougar had drifted away, and wondered where he’d gotten to – and shrugged his shoulders. “Alright, it’s a good plan,” he conceded.

But for some reason, all Pooch could hear was an echo of Roque’s voice. _We’re not the good guys anymore… Is - is this a guilt trip? No, I don’t want him to pay. I want my life back. Okay? My life back._

Movement against one of the crates had pooch looking up to see Cougar, leaning casually at the edges of the group, watching them with his unblinking stare. Something had Cougar worried, and Jensen had been acting off. Pooch had put that down to them simply not being able to transform, and getting restless about it, but now that Pooch really paid attention to it, Cougar seemed unnaturally focused on Aisha, to the exclusion of Clay and Roque – while Jensen seemed unnaturally focused on both Clay and Roque, when normally he would be carelessly oblivious to all of them.

As they were packing up everything, Jensen trying to pitch his idea of better laptops (plural, because apparently Jensen needed three to be most effective, though why any man needed three military-grade laptops…) subtly to Aisha by addressing the need to Clay, Pooch gravitated over to Cougar. “Is there anything up I should be aware of?” he asked sotto voce.

Cougar’s eyes flickered over him inquisitively.

Gesturing to Jensen and then returning his gaze to Cougar, Pooch murmured, “You guys aren’t – the same. Something up with you two?”

Cougar shot Pooch a disdainful glance as he packed the files neatly in their crate.

“Okay, yeah, the whole team’s off, but you two – you’re off, like the rest of us, but in the exact same way while the rest of us are messed up in our own, shitty-but-different ways. I just – is there something the whole team should know?” Pooch’s mind flashed back to standing by the eighteen-wheeler, applying duct tape to a makeshift rocket launcher. _Cats,_ Jensen had said offhandedly. _Not to be trusted_.

For a long moment, Cougar ignored Pooch, choosing instead to put the lid on the crate and fasten it down. Then he turned and held Pooch’s gaze, an inhuman intelligence burning in his brown eyes. “ _Si_ ,” he said softly. “But it is not – something we can discuss at the time.”

That was a very non-answer response to a question that Pooch felt deserved an answer. “And when do you think we can discuss it? Is it dangerous?”

Cougar’s eyes dropped and he tapped a finger once against the crate before lifting it up.

“ _Cougar_.”

With a hitch of his shoulder, Cougar kept on walking.

Alright then. Time to pin Jensen down.

***

“There’s something you and Cougar are hiding from us, isn’t there?”

Jensen choked on his coke and spluttered drops down the front of his shirt. “Pooch? What the hell, man?”

They had stopped for the night; Roque and Cougar were in the Jeep, Clay and Aisha in the back of the RV, and Pooch and Jensen in the front of the RV. The van they’d ditched – no need for it, now that they were making their way to the Port of Los Angeles. When it came down to it, they wouldn’t need these cars when they got there, either; they’d need a boat to do recon properly, one that wouldn’t be noticed. Aisha assured them it wouldn’t be a problem. Pooch would feel better once he knew exactly what kind of boat they had, but for right now they were just making their way through New Mexico. It was dark o’clock and Clay and Aisha were probably asleep. Hell, Pooch was starting to reach that point where he wanted to conk out himself, and Jensen was still up and running. Like the Energizer bunny. Kept going and going and… Right. Shaking his head, he slid his gaze to the side to look at Jensen, who was in turn looking at Pooch in confusion. “You and Cougar. You guys aren’t being totally upfront with us about something. Shit, you practically told me so when we did the chopper-jacking, didn’t you?”

See, this was why Pooch liked Jensen; guy squirmed when he felt guilty. Looking down at the small tablet in his hands (the only thing he’d managed to coax out of Aisha, and apparently he’d decided not to press his luck any further) Jensen hitched a shoulder defensively. “It’s… some shit I figured out in, fuck, in Bolivia. Nothing – I mean…” He trailed off, biting his lip, and Pooch abruptly remembered that afternoon where he witnessed Jensen breaking down.

“Look, if it’s dangerous, we need to know, man. There’s a lot going on and I think we’re ass-deep in shit that’s gonna kill us if we don’t have the full story.”

“I’m working on getting the full story, okay?” Jensen responded sharply, but shifting from the back of the RV had Jensen lowering his voice again. “Shit, Poochman, I am _trying_. I’m running a fucking program trying to locate exactly where each single penny of Fadhil’s money went, I’m trying to run a program to figure out where the fuck Wade came from to see if I can find Max from that direction, I’m trying to run a scan on Goliath’s financials to see if I can pinpoint Max from that angle, I’m trying to fucking isolate the tracker in my blood so I can transform without alerting the nearest army base a Procedural’s around, I’m trying to find a goddamn clue about Aisha beyond the fact that she’s a chick on a lot of people’s shit list.”

Pooch blinked. There were times when he didn’t see past Jensen’s persona, when he forgot that Jensen really wasn’t the youngest out of the group, and then Jensen would snap or make a casual, off-hand remark, and he’d remember that Jensen had been picked for the formula because the scientists had thought he’d made a good predator. “Look, I wasn’t trying to imply that you weren’t—” he started.

Jensen waved a hand, interrupting Pooch. “No, okay… no, I get it. I know. Everyone’s got something the hacker needs to get done, but I’ve got this piece of shit laptop and tablet and maybe a few other military-grade electronics left over from the Bolivia situation. I know – I _know_ – that you guys need to be told.” He let out a deep sigh, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I don’t… trust Aisha. And for the moment, what Aisha knows… Clay knows. Roque’s too focused on getting this shit over. Cougar – knows everything. Kinda dragged it out of me maybe three or four days before Aisha showed up. And – well, shit, Pooch, of all of us, I’d tell you, but fuck if I want to keep you chained here when you’ve got to get home to Jolene. Let’s just – get our names cleared, get you back to Jolene, let me go and watch my niece kick _ass_ on the field, and we’ll… figure the rest of it out later, okay?”

Slowly, Pooch nodded. “Okay, Jay. Alright.”

Another few minutes passed before Jensen sighed. “So I don’t think this is too dangerous to keep from Aisha, and might actually be important – I think Wade’s… not human.”

“What?”

“I don’t think Wade’s… human. I mean – okay, shit, I know he was in the army and everything, and was, like, a pre-wave Procedural, but he didn’t react the way either a human _or_ a Procedural would, when he saw Pooch. His eyes went yellow, but nothing else changed. His skin didn’t ripple. His hands remained completely human. He didn’t have any problem with the gas, when that would knock a Procedural right out. Even Cougar hates having to track scents through smoke – you know how he’s always sneezing. It’s not easy for him to do it. But Wade – shit, man, Wade kept his eyes trained on you. He recognized you without a scope or binoculars or anything. And last I knew, Wade was retired in private security, not chasing around after a mad man.” Jensen tapped his fingers nervously against the tablet, the screen lighting up Jensen’s neck and face with a weird blue glow. “And I think – I think Max might not be trying to _buy_ weapons, per se. I think he’s commissioning them. Making them.”

Pooch frowned. “Does that matter?” he asked slowly, drawing the words out. What would it matter that Max was buying or commissioning? The only difference was that they existed without Max in the first instance, and that they didn’t until Max told them to exist in the second. In either case, people on the other ends of the weapons ended up just as dead.

“I think – did you see that tattoo on Aisha’s arm?”

Used to Jensen’s odd way of explaining, and the random twists of his conversation, Pooch just rolled with it. “I did, yeah. Why?”

“There’s a – a kinda Wiccan sect, in northern Egypt and Libya. Along the coast, you know? Not exactly ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses, but kinda close. Practitioners, to be PC about this.” Biting on his lip, Jensen offered up even more softly, “Cougar thinks that there’s something supernatural about what he and I can do.”

That was such a random segue that Pooch didn’t really know how to react. Clearing his throat, he glanced over at Jensen and repeated, “Something… supernatural?”

“I mean, come on. I’m, what, one-eighty? Two-hundred? The average horse is around a thousand pounds, more if it’s a bigger horse like a draft horse, and yeah, a barb is a lighter horse, but…”

Noise from the back had Jensen quieting again, but he was visibly nervous, shifting and fidgeting. Pooch looked back, but the door between the front and the back was closed. “What?” he asked.

“I just – maybe when we’re not so close to Aisha,” Jensen responded, and he leaned over to turn on the radio, flipping through channels until he landed on a classic rock-ish station.

Pooch really didn’t want to leave it there, because that shit sounded important, but he didn’t dispute the fact that talking about Jensen and Cougar’s other forms around Aisha was asking for trouble. Though why the hell Jensen brought up – shit, _practitioners_? Like, witches and shit? That stuff was fairy tales, made up crap that kids believed in.

Then again, kids believed in shape-shifters and werewolves, too…


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okidoki. I'm at 122k words, I'm later than I wanted to be to get those 122k words down but that's also because I'm currently building a powerpoint presentation for my class on Thursday. Sorry. o.o;; John Zaller really isn't that interesting. But it must be done. The things political scientists debate about sometimes...
> 
> I hope Roque came across well here, and we're reaching the climax of the movie! Eventually. Soon. Thank you all for putting up with my erratic positing schedule, by the by. And for reading. Most especially for the reading.

Roque and Cougar had gotten to the Port of LA first, found the contact and secured the boat. Between the two of them, they unloaded the Jeep and got everything ready for the arrival of the rest of the team.

Roque watched Cougar, who worked with the steady intensity he always had. “Man, none of this shit even fazes you, does it?”

An eyebrow raised in question, Cougar put down the bag and tilted his head at Roque.

With an expressive gesture, Roque motioned at the boat and the gear. “You’re just gonna go along with this? Run head-long into an unknown situation like some white knight on a steed? You buy into Clay’s shit?”

Cougar held Roque’s gaze steadily for a heartbeat, not moving a muscle, and Roque sneered. “Yeah, you’d do that. Shit, does no one else see that this is bullshit? She framed us, put us back on the grid! We were in the States and we could’ve found a counterfeiter, could’ve gotten our lives back, and _she_ ruined it all!”

Sighing, Cougar picked up the bag again. “I do not follow _her_ ,” he murmured in his accented voice, and there was a flicker under his skin that meant he was fighting the change. Roque bit his lip; Cougar changed, and within four or five hours they’d have the army down on their heads, back in custody to live the rest of their days out in a cell.

Unless, of course, Roque slipped away. And shit, the rest of them were still a while out. Cougar would call to inform them that he’d alerted the army to their presence, and they’d stay away. This quest would be over and he wouldn’t even have to employ the back-up plan he had in case.

But Cougar was the most controlled Procedural for a reason, and he blew out a long breath, skin settling down. “I follow Clay, Roque. I will do so until it is clear he has become compromised unnecessarily.”

Roque shook his head. “You motherfuckers are just seeking to mess up Pooch and Jensen, aren’t you? I thought you and he watched each other’s backs better than this. What happened to leaving if he wanted to leave? You gonna back out on that?”

Cougar whipped around, eyes going inhuman, lips peeling back in a silent snarl and teeth beginning to lengthen. _Yes, yes, c’mon, Cougs, don’t let the team down, transform, shit, tear me apart, just blow this plan sky-high—_

Cougar checked himself right before he tackled Roque, holding himself stiff and frozen, skin dancing angrily, and Roque did his best to hide his disgust at what was happening in front of him. As much as the scientists tried to pretend it was all science, that this all made sense and they should accept the bio-changes as the next evolution in warfare – this was _wrong_ on a level that no one seemed to notice. Taking men and turning them into beasts that reacted as beasts and had senses like beasts and _thought_ like beasts…

Not that Roque could keep thinking that way anymore.

With a tight, bitter smile, Cougar settled his skin again, though his eyes didn’t lose their inhuman cast. “You listen where you aren’t wanted, Roque,” he growled, and his voice was rougher than a human’s ever should be able to be. “But yes. If Jensen told me he was done, I would leave. But Jensen, more than you and Pooch, feels responsible and he will not. And Clay is a good leader. He does not undermine his team, like you do. He does not blindly follow orders, like you do. And he does not, _ever_ , ignore injustice – _like you do._ ”

The betrayal of Cougar, Cougar who’d been with Clay and Roque longer than anyone, Pooch included, Cougar who’d Roque had killed ( _illegally_ ) for, who’d Roque and Clay taken on as a trial, a kid with too-big eyes and too-nervous hands and too-quiet demeanor – that _hurt_ in a way Roque had not known it could. Baring his teeth, he snarled back, “He put all of us at risk, you fucker. He disobeyed orders and got Jensen put in solitary. Time after time he’d go off-mission and he wouldn’t complete mission objectives and then he had the gall to think that we should take some little girl’s word because she looked pretty on his dick? _Fuck no_ , Alvarez. You be as blind as you want, but this is wrong and shit’s gonna get messed up if we keep in this direction.”

Cougar held his gaze unflinchingly, that unsettling glimpse of the beast still in the back of Cougar’s eyes. “Captain, _those children deserve more_. Whatever Max is doing – do you think he will just stop? Max is—” Cougar stopped, biting his tongue, and he shook his head. “There is something else going on, Roque. Either Aisha lied to us about Max’s endgame, or she doesn’t know, but what Jensen has been finding suggests that this is much, much bigger than a chopper in Bolivia. I will continue on this path until the costs outweigh the benefits. Until then, Roque, I will remain at Clay’s side – where you _should_ be.”

Turning on his heel, Cougar grabbed the last bag and strode onto the ship.

Cougar was out, then. Clay was hellbent on this thing, and Aisha was goading him on. Jensen seemed content to follow Clay around like a puppy.

Rubbing the junction of his neck, the irritated scar that was healing way to fast, Roque could only hope that he could still save Pooch.

***

When the others arrived and settled onto the boat, ditching the RV but keeping the Jeep around in case of an emergency, Roque leaned against the wall of the cabin and watched Jensen fiddle with the tablet he kept propped on his knees, muttering to himself. He very obviously was trying to keep up with quite a few different functions at once and Roque wondered whether any of them were aimed at something other than Max.

“You almost done, Jensen? We’re about to float past, get a look at the compound and give you time to set up the satellite watch,” Clay called from above-deck.

Jensen turned around and jumped a little when he saw Roque standing there. “Yeah, coming out, boss!” he called, standing up and setting the tablet down. “You okay, Roque?”

“Should be asking you that question,” Roque grunted. “You and Cougar seem… twitchy.”

Jensen’s eyes clouded a bit, but he tapped one laptop screen. “Almost done the encryption. Should be able to scan me and Cougar afterwards, figure out where the tracker is and whether a normal jamming signal will disrupt it or if I’ll have to build a whole code for it.” He stopped, hesitating, and then added in a quieter voice, “Roque… I found a guy that does identities. Made sure it was legit, everything like that. You can have your life back; you don’t need to be here if you don’t want.”

For a moment, Roque hesitated. He could just leave. He didn’t have to hold up his end of the bargain, didn’t have to throw all of them to the wolves. Jensen had found him an out. Then he shook his head, slowly. “Can he make sure I’ll never be found by Wade or Max? Or by anyone? If Wade knows we’re alive, what’s the probability that he’ll have someone out scouring the world for us until he’s got our skulls in his hand?” _Can he undo what Wade did to me when I contacted him?_

Jensen licked his lips nervously. “There’s no guy out there that can give you a foolproof identity except the NSA, maybe the CIA. But they don’t want us around, Roque. This guy’s the best you’re going to get, and then you can – I dunno what you wanna do. Ship off to the Bahamas? The Caribbean? Uncle Sam ain’t gonna look for you if you aren’t causing them problems.”

“But no guarantees.”

“Roque,” Jensen said wryly, moving past him to the door, “in our line of work, there are no such things as guarantees.”

Jensen disappeared up on deck, and Roque stared at the computers. They had today and tomorrow for recon, tomorrow night for the op, and then – what? Would this net them anything more than what they’d gotten from Max’s convoy? Aisha admitted she couldn’t find Max. They were shooting in the dark with no target, no idea of where to go. There was a server here that _might_ have something to do with Max, that _might_ have files on it that would clear their names, that they _might_ be able to get into with only two days recon.

Roque was tired of leaving his life up to _might_ s.

***

Up on deck, Roque paced the bow, unable to stay still. Things were set in motion, but there was still that last signal, that last thing that he could just _not do_ and nothing would happen. Clay and the rest of them, they were smart, they’d figure it out, they’d get out. But if he called, if he made that last decision… there would be no way out. There would be nothing they could do. And Roque wasn’t certain anymore what to choose. Cougar and Jensen were, shit, were so far gone over this mission that they couldn’t hear what Roque was practically yelling at them. Pooch heard, but he still had that stubborn faith in Clay. Clay needed to mess up, bad, so Roque could just take in Clay and make everyone happy with that, without signing over his whole team.

“What are we up against?”

Roque glanced over at Cougar as he climbed up to Clay, looking at Jensen’s posture, Cougar’s steadiness, Aisha’s easy lounge. They were fine with this, they were going to go through with this. Pooch was more on the fence and Roque tried to figure out a time he could talk to Pooch alone.

“Chryon,” Cougar replied.

“Oh, _shit_ ,” Roque said. Well, fuck. Chryon would be good enough that even if Roque didn’t do the last step, the team still might not make it out. When Max hired security, he obviously had money to burn.

“We start recon at oh-six hundred. Anyone not here for it…” Clay paused and glanced over at Roque specifically, and Roque did his best not to sneer at Clay in return. “… I’ll understand.”

Well fuck you and your fucking understanding.

Everyone else seemed to know what Clay meant, too – Jensen glanced over at him, and even Pooch’s head twitched towards Roque. Cougar, though – Cougar simply packed up the gun and scope and made his way down into the cabin. Aisha watched Clay move to the wheel, maneuvering the boat back to the docks, close enough that they could observe the compound without being too obtrusive. Not even two days, now – recon started tomorrow morning. Then again, Pooch would have to get an inconspicuous and unthreatening ride, which the Jeep most decidedly was _not_. They’d need to pile together more ammo, make sure they had an escape route. The majority of the backup plans would be in place today.

And now Roque had all of today and tomorrow to make his final decision.

***

Cougar watched him carefully, eyes distrustful and lips tight. Jensen and Pooch didn’t seem to pick up on anything, and Clay had gotten some hotel room further in the city, taking the Jeep to legally park it somewhere so it wouldn’t be noticed. At least, that was the explanation given; none of them really believed it. Clay was just tired of the enforced closeness as they all were, except as team leader he could actually do shit about it. Roque contented himself by regularly strolling out onto the dock, using the binoculars to glance at the security detail, and debate his choice in his mind.

When it came right down to it, he didn’t trust Clay to make good decisions anymore. He’d initiated this whole plan with the singular intent to get Clay taken in so that everyone else would be cut loose from his madness. His little chat with Wade had revealed that Cougar and Jensen would likely never be cut loose – they were assets, they had something in their blood that let them be tracked if they ever transformed, and they were unstable creatures if on their own. His and Pooch’s fate was more flexible; the army didn’t particularly need a driver and a knifeman any more than they already had. He and Pooch could walk free.

He’d tried to insinuate that Cougar should make a break for it – Jensen had seemed absolutely on board with whatever Clay was planning – and Cougar had shot him down. It had hurt, yeah, but you really didn’t want to cross the CIA super spook that’d managed to have you legally declared dead. No one would care if that legal status became reality, after all. If the CIA spook wanted Clay, Jensen, and Cougar, well… Roque couldn’t stop that at all. But Pooch… Roque was trying to find some corner where he could apply pressure, make it clear that no one would fault Pooch for backing off and going back to his wife.

Then again, Pooch was steady. Dependable. Just as insane as all of them, in his own way. Why would Roque think he’d back out now?

With a sigh, he flipped his phone in his hands, up and down, staring out over the water. It was getting dark, and the plan would be implemented in five hours. He had to make the call now, before they went in, for his amnesty to be granted. Aisha had just left the boat – probably to find Clay, because she was working really hard to get Clay wrapped around her little finger and dammit it was _working_ – Cougar, Pooch, and Jensen were in the cabin wrapping up the recon and putting the finishing touches on the plan, and Roque was sitting out here, tired of it all, tired of being dragged around behind an ex-CO who refused to look beyond the end of his own nose.

He pressed the call button and put the phone to his ear. “Five hours,” he said bluntly, and then hung up.

If Wade and his omniscient overseer couldn’t pull together a response team in five hours, that was their own problem.

***

Coming inside the cabin, Cougar glanced at him briefly before going back to cleaning his gun, hands moving in practiced motions over gunmetal silver. Pooch and Jensen were laughing on the other side, Pooch with a cheap netbook and Jensen with a slightly better grade laptop that Aisha had managed to secure for him.

“What are you doing?” Roque asked, brushing a hand against Cougar’s knee and getting a nod in return before he moved over to the chair by the controls, settling himself down with his cup of coffee he’d gotten while he was out. At his words, Jensen got a faintly guilty look and clicked a tab, opening up a line of code that was running a search, and a progress bar popped up, almost completed.

“Ah – I was just trying to connect Fadhil’s drug operation with Max’s cash,” Jensen explained. “There’s about four million missing.” Jensen turned, looking as if he would explain more to Roque, but Roque’s expression must have been working because he turned immediately back to the screen and typed in a few more lines as a different window popped up. “I’m just – trying to track it down,” Jensen ended, keeping his eyes on the screen.

Dismissing Jensen, who was already starting to sink into the world of computer codes, Roque inclined his head at Pooch. “What’re you doing there, Pooch?” he asked.

“Jensen hacked a satellite for me earlier,” Pooch said, and his voice was soft, almost reverent.

Roque didn’t really need to ask, but he did so anyway. “What’cha need a satellite for?”

Pooch sighed nostalgically, turning the little netbook around to show Roque the outside of a supermarket, in Connecticut, a heavily pregnant woman pushing a shopping cart. Roque looked at the timestamp and blinked. “Wait a minute, is that today?” he asked curiously. Jensen had never been able to hack current satellites, only old saved up images stored on servers. Either Jensen had gotten better stuff or he’d managed to find an unsecured satellite over Connecticut today.

Pooch laughs half-heartedly, and all Roque can do is murmur, “Congratulations, man.”

“Congratulations,” Pooch echoes, and ends up saying quietly, almost brokenly, “I can’t let her have that baby without me.”

And see, that shit, right there, that was why this was a stupid-ass idea and a fucking cock-up. Pooch had family, and no kid deserved to grow up without their dad. Their dad was supposed to be there for them.

Roque couldn’t meet Pooch’s gaze. Cougar looked over from the corner – Jensen was in whatever haze hacking had him in – and his features softened marginally. At least he understood a bit more about why Roque was pushing this. Enough to get them to back off, to give up this thing? Roque was pretty certain not, but Cougar’s quiet acceptance helped ease some of the cold lump in Roque’s chest.

“What?” Pooch asked, voice gaining the edge that reminded Roque that Pooch had held his own against thirty guys with machine guns to get Cougar, Roque, and Clay out of a bad spot. “What?”

Fuck Clay and his fucking revenge. “Pooch… we all know we’re gonna die in there,” Roque said quietly. “And we can do it without you.” Stating facts, trying not to be harsh, trying to show some fucking consideration because Clay wasn’t doing it at all.

Cougar glanced over at the two of them, hands stilling against the gun he had meticulously been cleaning. Only Jensen remained oblivious, glasses reflecting numbers and symbols scrolling by on the black screen before him. With a sigh, Pooch shook his head. “No, you can’t,” he said instead, and Roque just wanted to shoot all these guys with tranqs, dump them somewhere far away, hell, even tranq Clay and stop them from this suicide mission.

“Go home,” Roque said, voice rough and fighting back the tone that would make it an order. Cougar was already onto Roque, knowing that Roque was talking about bucking Clay’s leadership and ending the whole quest right here and now, and he couldn’t press Pooch the way he could if they were alone. But he could try to make sure Pooch’s kid had a dad, that Pooch was out of this insanity.

No one spoke; hell, Pooch looked like he was ready to agree. Then a soft chime from Jensen’s laptop had him crowing in success. “Got it!” he said, voice thick with satisfaction as information scrolled on the screen and he paused it with a few keystrokes, highlighting a bank account with four million dollars held in a family account. Minutes later, hunched over the laptop with Cougar craning his neck over, Pooch moving to Jensen’s side for a better look, and Roque unable to keep himself aloof, leaning forward to stare at the screen, Jensen mumbled, “It’s a family trust… Says that in the event of his death, it goes to his… kid… Name of…”

Screens flew past, encryptions flashing red, then green as Jensen shoved his way through the last of the protections.

“ _Shit_.”

“Wow,” Pooch said, and it was just their fucking luck, wasn’t it?

Jensen slammed shut the laptop and they ran to collect their leader.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is me throwing out this chapter now because I have a presentation due and my partner's not helping (WHY, WHY ARE YOU MAKING GRAD STUDENTS HAVE PARTNERS, WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO OUR OWN PRESENTATIONS THANK YOU WE ARE OLD ENOUGH BY NOW). Word count is still unchanged and I just have not had the time, people. This pace is killing me, between driving siblings to school (car in shop) trying to read everything (while making presentations) trying to do game theory homework (when he gives us only 4 days for something he teaches us 2 days ago) trying to complete another chapter to explain something in another story (I can't stop writing ugh word vomit) and I just am so tired.
> 
> Hi.
> 
> Ahem. Anyway. I will reply to all comments by tonight, will have an updated word count by tonight, which I hope will be at least 3-4k higher.

Jake had been the one to say as calmly as possible to the receptionist at the motel’s front desk, “Sorry, sorry, know we’re parked wrong, family emergency and we need to talk to someone, van’ll be moved real soon, thank you!” Roque had already been up the stairs, Cougar and Pooch hot on his heels, and Jake was cursing to himself as he stuffed the keys into his pocket. Shit, he should’ve looked deeply into Aisha’s cover – granted, it was a fucking deep cover, and he’d have to figure out who’d done the tech work on that end because even with all the red flags that popped up about her on a whole bunch of bad guys’ lists, there had never been any more info than a general _stay-the-fuck-out-of-her-way-until-back-up-comes-and-then-pray-we-can-bring-her-in_ message.

So he was a bit out of breath and definitely not thinking right, not beyond _herdmaster-in-danger-danger-DANGER_ and his own little (huge) guilt-trip fest, when he came in after Pooch and said straight out, “She’s Fadhil’s daughter – oh, _shit_.”

Because there was Aisha, fucking _hot_ , and after moving past the fact that she was in nothing but a tight tank and boy-shorts, Jake recognized two guns, one trained on Clay who, obviously hadn’t expected this, was sitting on the edge of the bed in nothing but an undershirt and boxers (ew, ew, no, Jake didn’t need a mental image of Clay having sex _ever_ ) and one trained on _himself_ , and not just trained _anywhere_ on little ol’ Jake but trained on his _dick_.

Intelligently, the only words that came out were “She’s got a gun… and it’s pointed at my dick.” Taking a breath, trying to calm his horse and knowing that his skin was rippling, that everyone could see him fighting to change, he said in a tone that even he could recognize as whining, “Clay, it’s pointed at my _dick_! _Clay_!”

“Would you rather it be pointed at your face?” Pooch growled, and Jake was suddenly viciously aware that his fellow Losers were so on edge at the point that it would take very little to do more than Aisha to breathe wrong before one trigger-happy person (ahem, _Roque_ ) would shoot Aisha in the head.

Time to create a distraction. Killing Aisha at this point was unnecessary, because if anyone had a reason not to sell them out to Max, it was Aisha, and her intel had been right (okay, not fully disclosed, but the stuff she _had_ disclosed had been on point) and Clay would be upset if Aisha was shot full of holes.

And so he launched himself into full distraction mode. “I know it makes no sense, but yes,” he said in a definitive tone. He could see Cougar twitch next to him, a half-second’s amount of attention that moved away from Aisha to Jake instead. It was going to work, it was going to work…

Aisha obligingly raised the gun to point at Jake’s nose. Not much more comforting, but right now Jake just had to come up with some more chatter that would allow them to enter into a dialogue and figure things out—

“Better?” Pooch said, and shit, he was going to catch such hell from Pooch he’d be lucky to have skin left on his ass afterwards. How many times had his fellow Losers told him over and over to carry his gun before his laptop? Cougar was going to deny him sex for _months_ because of this…

“Not really,” Jake responded, but he was distracted, shifting a little on the balls of his feet in order to keep himself centered in his human form. He could see Aisha’s gaze calculating, looking at the tiny shifts in his skin – but she wasn’t curious. Startled. Surprised. No, she looked like she knew exactly what was happening, and was either trying to figure out how soon he would transform or what animal he transformed, judging from the way she watched the streaks of grey appear and disappear on his forearms.

“Where’s your gun, Jensen?” Pooch asked, and Jake winced.

“In the van?”

“What’s it doing there?” Pooch snarled, and there, there, Clay was looking over at him, Roque’s gun – well, it wasn’t lowering, but his full attention wasn’t on Aisha anymore, and Cougar was beginning to look more exasperated than trigger-happy.

“Not much,” Jake admitted.

Roque broke first, turning to glower at Jake. “Would you shut up?!” he snarled, and Cougar shifted minutely, as if to put himself more between Roque and Jake.

“What if it was pointed at _your_ dick?” Jake demanded, because Aisha’s focus was also moving away from the four of them lined up and they just might make it—

A burst of fire, a gunshot, and Jake was forced to the ground by the shock and surprise and force of it because _motherfucker_ he’d thought he was doing good there, but Aisha was crazy and maybe he hadn’t taken account for how crazy because there was a crashing sound – glass, the mirror, something with the mirror – and then the slam of a door even as more gunfire blasted through the room. Shot after shot and Jake’s horse was panicking now, the skin of his hands starting to harden into hooves and then slipping back to flesh. Too restless, too much tension and stress and coupled with the inability to transform and the _PAINsearingbrightHOT_ in his arm, his horse was not a happy camper.

Suddenly Pooch and Cougar were there, and vaguely Jake realized he was gasping and trying to bite back moans through gritted teeth as his eyesight flashed from horse to human and back again, disorienting him.

“Jay,” Pooch said, voice rough and commanding, pulling his attention away from the pain and Jake tried to focus on Pooch’s words. “Where are you hit?”

“She shot me,” Jake managed to get out. “In my _arm_ —”

Cougar’s fingers bunched in Jake’s shirt, even as Pooch grabbed at Jake’s shoulder and neck – trying to calm the horse, the miniscule part of Jake’s human brain decided to inform him – and then Pooch was saying over his grunts and cries, “You’re gonna live. You’re gonna live.”

Yeah, Jake knew that, had been shot before in worse places and been fine, but his horse was too close to the surface and its panic was setting off a domino effect that wasn’t being helped by Cougar’s rough ripping at the lower part of Jake’s sleeve. Pooch was somehow gone, and then Cougar was tying fabric against Jake’s upper arm roughly, yanking the knot tight, and Jake gasped and moaned. “Cougar, be gentle!” he said, begging, and Cougar’s eyes were hot with fury and disappointment. If anyone knew that Jake had been setting himself up as a distraction, it’d be Cougar, and obviously Cougar disagreed with Jake’s decision. _Vehemently_ disagreed with it. Jake tried not to let that cutting gaze hurt as much as it wanted to.

That was a losing battle, too.

***

They made it to the van without meeting up with the cops, somehow, and then Cougar was digging in his pocket for the keys, which were then handed over to Pooch while Clay and Roque shoved Jake into the back and then climbed into the seats. Jake was fighting his change tooth and nail, though the small syringe of morphine Cougar had unearthed was a godsend, really it was.

Outside a closed convenience store, Pooch propped Jake against the wall and while the small bit of morphine really was helping, it also meant it was a lot harder for Jake to pay attention to things. His mind kept wandering, jumping from the different searches and leads he’d been looking at on the laptop to the team dynamics to the plan and how fucked they all were and then to Aisha, the unknown element, the X in the whole equation that kept throwing all of them off. And his mind kept jumping to Cougar’s soft words about the supernatural, stories that kids read in fairy tales and passed around campfires, and he began to muddle through connections in hopes of finding that one shining example that would link everything together in a thorough, self-explanatory way.

Roque opened the door – Jake assumed Roque disabled the alarm system, because Roque knew things like alarm systems and this piece of shit system was outdated by at least ten years, if not fifteen, and a shame to the proprietor, the cheapskate – and then Pooch was hustling Jake inside, and okay, yeah, Jake himself was a bit freaked out by the now-constant shifting of his skin and the way that his fields of vision kept splitting and then refusing, but really, they were acting like this was dire and it really wasn’t, he’d be fine.

Of course, then they hauled him up on pharmacy counter, gave him a teething toy to bite on (fucking Roque), and proceeded to cut out a hole in his shirt and then there was Cougar, leaning over, their field medic and all-around medicine guy, starting to stich up Jake’s arm. First, of course, Cougar had had to dig to get the bullet out, and hadn’t _that_ been fun, but now, thirty minutes or so later, Jake was lying quiet, Pooch no longer needed to hold his legs, and his skin and finally started to slow down its civil war, patches of grey only slowly showing to fade away minutes later, and then another five minutes would pass before it would start again. All in all, Jake was proud of himself, to keep himself in human form _and_ pay attention to the people around him.

Not that they were being very interesting. Oh, Clay was, what with the absolute _stench_ of guilt and self-loathing that Clay was giving off, but the others were more reserved. Roque was antsy, nervous, glancing at the clock every other minute. Either he really hadn’t disabled the alarm and they should be expecting the cops any moment now, or he was counting down the time to… something. What, Jake really didn’t know. He wasn’t on top of his game at the moment, really – he had an excuse.

Cougar was tightly controlled, each motion precise and filled with seething rage. More than half of that rage was aimed at Jake, Jake could tell, and he flinched a little every time Cougar slid the needle through flesh again. Cougar either didn’t notice or was punishing him for not bringing his gun to a gunfight; probably the latter, though it might be the former, if Cougar was feeling that the constant battle to remain human was punishment enough.

…Yeah, it was probably the latter.

Pooch was – Pooch was understandably upset. Furious. He’d put his trust in Clay and Clay’d blown it sky-high, proving that he’d picked yet another crazy woman who was going to kill them all if she had a chance.

“The whole op’s blown,” Pooch said, voice heavy. “She knows our names, our faces…” He trailed off, and a look of pain crossed his face. Jake knew before he opened his mouth what Pooch was going to ask.

“Does she know about our families?” he said, and yep, that was it, and that was the underlying steel that made Pooch one of the scariest men on this whole team when the situation called for it. He was staring, almost plaintively, at Clay, but all Clay was doing was leaning on the wooden display case next to the pharmacy counter, head hanging, seemingly ignoring them all.

“Dammit Clay, _look at me_ ,” Pooch snarled, and Clay looked up, face so, so blank that Jake was seriously worried that Aisha not only knew about their families, but knew exactly where to find them and knew everything about them down to their social security numbers and what they ate for breakfast regularly.

Pooch repeated himself, each word a hard stone dropped like a fucking shell casing. “Does she know about our families?”

For a moment, it looked like Clay really wasn’t going to answer, that he was going to ignore Pooch again, but then he answered gruffly, “Yes.”

Pooch flinched, Jake saw that. As it was, Jake twisted his head against the makeshift-toilet-paper-turned-pillow Cougar had nabbed for him. Shit. Emily and little Raina, and the people Jake had put to watch them and Jolene would only _watch_ , they wouldn’t interfere, not when they had realized Jake had been burned because he’d played too close to the sun. They had no defenses, no reason to think they would _need_ a defense, and all Jake could think of was his little angel on the soccer field, tiny and miniscule, Emily driving the two of them home and oh, the many, many accidents that can happen with cars…

“I gotta go home, to Springfield,” Pooch said roughly, and Jake tried not to sigh, tried not to do anything but rub his eyes and try to force his horse under control as Pooch continued, “Jensen can come with me. His niece is in New Hampshire.” There was a heartbeat of silence, Cougar looking at Pooch, refusing to look at Jake, and Clay refusing to lift his head at all. Then Pooch shook his head. “I’m done.”

Jake licked his lips. He _should_ go home to Emily and Raina, should get them to a safe place, give them new identities and get them to one of his safe houses. Hell, he should get them out of the country – the two half-hearted attempts at safe houses weren’t any fit place for a child and his sister. Sell both those places, grab other assets and liquidize them, take them to fucking Canada and that house he’d bought even though it was supposed to be a surprise for his retirement… He’d been teaching Raina French anyway…

Roque shoved away from the counter violently, and there was a flash of pinked skin around his collarbone. A scar, one that looked startlingly new and just as startlingly familiar. That type of scar – Jake had seen it before, though not on Roque. In fact, Jake would be willing to bet that that scar was completely new. He’d seen all the Losers in various states of undress (Cougar more than most, but when you go on week-long ops and live in the same campsite, seeing one another in their respective birthday suits was pretty much a given) and he could swear on a stack of Bibles or on his precious laptop that that kind of scar had not been on Roque four, five days ago.

But before Jake’s brain could latch onto that (if it even could, what with his mind spinning in ten different directions at once), Roque said the most startling thing ever.

“Well, I’m going to the port, okay?”

And there was something _wrong_ with that, with the way he’d stepped back and put the three of them on one side of a line while he stood with Clay on the other. He seemed – happy, relieved almost, that he and Clay were going to do this, that Pooch would be taking Jake and going, and Jake dragged brain power away from the question of Roque’s new scar to try and analyze this new bit of information.

Clay seemed happy with this, but then again, Clay felt responsible and guilty for Aisha, so of course anything that would make Pooch happy at this point would be accepted with open arms. “You get back to your families,” he said quietly, pushing off of the display case to stand by Roque’s side. “We’ll get Max.”

Jake just lay there, feeling ridiculous with the baby teether in his hand, but his brain was much too sluggish at the moment to try and figure out what exactly was going on. This was – such an about-face on Roque’s part that Jake almost literally could not comprehend it.

“I did this. I made the call in Bolivia; I put your families in danger,” Clay continued, and Jake seized up, mouth opening to deny it because Bolivia wasn’t Clay’s fault, it was _Jake’s_ , but then Cougar’s hand shifted to rest against the top of Jake’s head, quieting, calming.

“Just let me and Clay finish this,” Roque jumped in.

Pooch hung his head, hands braced on the counter, as Jake still tried to work up the courage to deny Clay’s words. “So you two idiots are gonna go in there blind?” he asked, voice slightly mocking.

Cougar’s eyes flickered down to Jake’s, asking silently. The conversation from that night on the top of those shipping containers came back to Jake suddenly:

_I believe the team must live, too, and that is stronger than revenge. If you were to leave – if you were to follow Roque, and pull out of this, I would follow you, Jake._

Now, as then, Jake couldn’t tell Cougar no. He knew that, if they were doing ranking systems, Clay’s guilt over those kids wouldn’t touch Cougar’s grief. Cougar needed Max more than he needed safety, especially when his family was estranged, washing their hands of him when he had chosen his violent path. Reaching over with his good arm, he looked at the stitches and then looked at his hand, the shifting noticeably lessened. He’d be able to hold it. He wouldn’t put the mission in jeopardy.

Cougar must have read Jake’s acceptance in his eyes, because he lifted his gun, checked the ammo, and said softly, confidently, “Three.”

Licking his lips, the teether resting on his chest and staring up at the fluorescent lights, Jake sighed. “Hey, getting shot’s great,” he said wryly. “I’m up for doing it again.”

A half beat of silence, and then Roque snorted. “Four idiots,” he said, and his face looked – sad, almost. Regretful, and resigned. Pitying, a little, and that scar was covered now by his shirt but the image of it was burned into Jake’s eyes and _why did it look so familiar—_

“You sons of bitches,” Pooch chuckled, and there was an almost manic edge under his voice that Jake turned to look at him – and realized that everyone else had been looking at him too. Why, he didn’t know. Okay, yeah, it would feel odd being the only one not going, but could Clay, or Roque, or, hell, _Cougar_ , blame Pooch for wanting it to be over? For wanting to be back by your family’s side, protecting them from a danger that was going to be coming for sure? Taking out Max wouldn’t take out Aisha, and this op wasn’t even to take out Max – it was to gain enough dirty information on Max to force him to back off from them, force their names to be cleared so they didn’t have to find different identities and different homes. So that the army would give them a pension; so that their social security cards could start working again. For fuck’s sake, so they could _vote_ in the next election legally.

Jake didn’t want Pooch with them. He wanted Pooch in Springfield, Massachusetts, after getting Jolene from Hartford, Connecticut where she was staying with Pooch’s grandmother.

“I’ll drive,” Pooch whispered, and he sounded so _wrecked_ , Jake couldn’t help but turning his head to him, opening his mouth to tell him that it was fine, it was alright, in fact, if he went to Springfield then he could keep a better eye on Emily and Raina for Jake—

“Five,” Clay said, and fuck Clay and his smugly satisfied voice. Jake glared at the ceiling and could feel his horse starting to get antsy again. He almost – _almost_ – missed Roque’s bitter twist of a smile that looked more like sadness than satisfaction.

***

Waiting outside the security compound with Pooch and Cougar in the van – it had character, even if Cougar had wrinkled his nose at it when Pooch had hotwired it a day and a half ago – Jake turned to Pooch.

“Look man, I don’t want you feeling guilty. Of all of us, you have the best chance on the outside and Jolene _needs_ you, man. Hell, you’ll be right there to take care of Emily and Raina because _we’re not making it out okay_ , you _know_ that—-”

“Jensen, shut up,” Pooch muttered, placing the binoculars on the chair next to him as he watched Roque and Clay gather the materials they’d need to clip open the fence. “I said I’ll drive.”

“Yeah, because Clay and Roque guilt-tripped you into it, the fuckers,” Jake snarled, and apparently he was on edge enough that Pooch stopped looking at them and turned to meet Jake’s gaze. Jake sighed explosively and ran a hand through his hair, ignoring the sting of the wound and the restless dancing of his inner animal. “They shouldn’t have done that. Shouldn’t have expected to throw in your lot with us.”

“Then why’d _you_ do it, Jay?” Pooch growled back. “Why are you here?”

“Because Bolivia is _my fucking fault,_ ” Jake hissed, even as Clay and Roque were running to the fence to get it open and Cougar was kicking his foot to make him move. He didn’t have time to do anything beyond taking in Pooch’s surprised look, and then he was out of the van and running to the hole in the fence along with Cougar, making their way in now that Clay and Roque had cut it open.

Jake slipped in the hole moments behind Clay, Roque, and Cougar, splitting off to head for the main offices immediately. Info was, after all, the most important part of this mission, and he’d trust Clay and Roque to guard the ground and Cougar to watch from up high somewhere (okay, not _somewhere_ , he knew exactly where, but it wasn’t like he could pinpoint it without a map, so) while he busted his ass to get inside.

His regular parkour stunts were not exactly up to snuff, not with his arm still stinging, but it did seem that since his horse was this restless, he had a lot more spring in his step, a better ability to jump and run than normal. He didn’t quite know if that was normal or a side effect from when he had let his horse run free without any restrictions, but he hoped it wouldn’t affect the mission too much.

Climbing the barbed wire, he misplaced his hand and got his glove snagged on a barb. Grunting expletives at himself, he ignored the shout of alarm – though, shit, that probably gave away the fact that something was happening, someone had to have heard that, this had to speed up now and they needed to get out much faster. No other shouts came, and he figured either Clay, Roque, or Cougar had taken care of the problem. Bets on Cougar, though – Clay and Roque were supposed to be locating a vehicle that could transport file cabinets and computers if the security was too much to crack within five minutes or the info needed was stuffed in hard copy somewhere in a file. Moving quickly, Jake slid down his rope and touched down lightly, unable to stop the rush of adrenaline. “And – _disco_ ,” he breathed, letting go of the rope.

Knocking came from one of the doors.

Practically skipping over, Jake leaned close to the door. “What’s the password?” he asked.

“Let us in or I’ll kill you.”

Yep, that was Roque. “Correct,” he said, a little breathless because his horse was on the edge and adrenaline was pumping and this was getting _done_. Unlocking the door, he held it open for Roque and Clay to come in and start setting up bombs to blow the joint to high hell. “Main server is two skylights over,” he said quickly, before pointing over to the far end of the interior. “I’m coming out of that door.”

Clay nodded. “Be ready to move as soon as Cougar hits the fire alarm,” Clay repeated, and that would be in exactly seven minutes and change. “Get gone,” Clay added, and Jake needed no further instruction; he remembered everything, after all. He skipped-ran away, trying to keep his movements looking human and not – well, not inhuman. Hooking the rope back onto the release mechanism, he wound himself back up to the roof and made his way over two skylights.

“I’m above the computer room,” he relayed over the comms, steeling himself for the drop. “Maybe thirty seconds out.” And then two minutes until he’d either have all the information loaded onto his memory stick or know whether they’d have to snatch and grab instead.

Instead of hearing the confirmation he’d expected from Pooch, he heard, “ _Shit._ ”

Jake paused, ready to throw the whole op out if something was happening. The comms crackled again as Pooch muttered, “Wade’s here. Last chance to get the hell out of Dodge.”

Wade… why would Wade be here? It seemed unlikely, extremely coincidental, that less than a week after the Losers had stolen the package Wade had been protecting, Wade would be _here_ of all places. Unless… unless there was something here he’d been ordered to protect. Yeah, that made sense. If the boss was upset that a chunk of money had gone missing, he’d want to double-check all his other safe places. Wade being here was probably a good thing.

Except, of course, that Wade wasn’t human. That Jake had no idea what Wade was, let alone whether that would have any bearing on how Wade dealt with them.

All Clay said was, “Roger that.”

Jake hesitated perhaps five seconds more before figuring that was all he’d get from Clay; this was still going to happen. Breathing in sharply, he whispered to himself, “ _Go Petunias_ ,” and crashed through the skylight.

 _Perfect_ landing. Grinning to himself, he murmured, “And the crowd goes wild—”

Just as his horse senses _screamed_ at him, and a rough voice asked mockingly, “Where do you think _you’re_ going?”

Mother _fuck_.

Jake smiled wanly. “How you guys doing?”


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you know what I remembered? Back at the beginning, this was a once-a-week deal, and while I feel bad to take it back there, I only increased it to twice-weekly updates because it was summer and I was stuck sitting in the college library waiting for my sister's class to be done because she's not old enough to have a permit and drive herself home. I think that's what I'm gonna do, switch this back to a twice-weekly deal. Not this week, but next week, so you'll still get an update today and Wednesday.
> 
> However, what day would you prefer the once-a-week update to be on? Monday, to start off the week, or Wednesday, the hump day to get to the end of the week?
> 
> As it stands, I have 125k+ written, hitting my stride again as I'm moving past a slow part into action again. 
> 
> Also, this chapter starts moving into my headcanon, and will continue pretty much strictly in my AU with some input from the movies until the epilogue of the movie, and then veer off again. So... welcome to the craziness in my head? Only you guys put up with it pre-movie, so hopefully it all remains cool. Yeah? Yeah...

Clay had a ringing headache. Not a result from a hangover, though – couldn’t be, his stomach wasn’t protesting enough for that to be true. Last he remembered was…

Sky was lightening. People were walking close; Clay could feel their footsteps on the ground. Wade – was that Wade?

“Hello, Clay.”

Fuck. That was Wade.

Then Wade looked up, past Clay, and Clay’s heart sank, _burned_ , in his chest.

“Roque.”

Roque’s voice, short and brittle and Jesus, there was anger there. “Wade,” he returned through what seemed to be gritted teeth.

A heartbeat, two, and then Roque said almost casually – too casually, this wasn’t the Roque he knew, this wasn’t adding up _at all_ – “Yeah. After the Miami fiasco, I cut a deal, Clay.”

Forcing himself up into a sitting position, Clay spit on the ground and laughed weakly, trying to understand _why_. “You’re a goddamned traitor,” he rasped, and for a moment it looked like Roque flinched back, but he didn’t move, stood stock still and looked down at Clay and his hands handcuffed in front of him ( _why not in back, did they seriously underestimate what Clay could do with his hands in front of him?_ ).

“No, _you betrayed us!_ ” Roque yelled, and there was hurt there, and anger, oh god, the anger, and Clay suddenly realized he was alone here in the warehouse – where were his men? What had happened? Roque had given them up, obviously, but Roque wasn’t acting right. Then again, he’d never suspect Roque of betrayal, of turning traitor, of _turning them in to the very man that exiled them all_. So really, Roque’s out of character actions was just par for the course, really…

“I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t _listen_ ,” Roque growled, fists clenched at his sides. “No, you wanted your revenge; the face-to-face with the big, bad wolf. The voice on the radio. All that _bullshit_.” There was a pause, and Roque swallowed before saying, “Now I get to walk away.”

Did Roque really not see it? “We _all_ would’ve walked, Roque,” Clay responded, unable to see his friend, his teammate, his goddamn SIC where this man was standing. This – wasn’t Roque. Wasn’t the guy that Clay had trusted with his life time after time after time. Roque turned his head away, and that almost looked like shame, but before Clay could continue, Wade snorted and stepped forward.

“Don’t you get it yet?” he asked, smirking. “There’s no _server._ Max _lured_ you here—” And Roque was handing over the hard drive to Wade, refusing to look over at Clay. Something – was wrong. Roque was acting – off, with Wade. Wade was lording it over Clay, yeah, but he had Clay in a position of weakness. Roque – he wasn’t in that position. Wade wasn’t acting right with Roque, and Roque wasn’t acting right with—

Heh. Well. As if he knew what “acting right” meant for Roque anymore.

“This—” Wade paused, looking around at the shipping containers, “—is a CIA cash stash.”

Shaking his head at the arrogance of this man who thought he’d brought Clay to his knees, Clay looked at Roque and said softly, “Kill me now, and maybe you’ll walk away from this.”

Roque smiled, an out-of-place emotion, Clay felt, but made no move to reach for gun or knife. Not that Wade gave him any time or a chance – he interjected, “No, you die later. You’re about to steal a billion dollars from the CIA.”

A fucking set-up, only with Roque pulling the strings. But Roque knew what the Losers were like, knew that keeping them alive for any reason was the worst thing you could do. He’d never hesitated before, never was squeamish when it came to expediency in the field. Execution-style shot to the back of the head, arranged in a way that looked either random or purposeful – Roque had done it all.

Why wasn’t he pushing for this? What was going on?

… It’d help if his head could stop ringing.

With an almost savage smile, he looked up at his former SIC. “Congratulations, Roque,” he murmured. “You just helped these assholes get everything they need to start a war.”

Roque licked his lips, dropped his gaze. Something was _not right_ about his reactions.

Wade glanced over at Roque, smug and supremely confident. “We cool?” he said, but it was more of a command than a question, as if there could be no other response _except_ agreement. Hell, Clay expected Roque to buck simply because of that expectation.

But no. Roque stared at Clay for a moment before his eyes skittered back to Wade—

_—since when did Roque have a scar like that? Clay didn’t remember Roque ever having a scar there, looking like bite marks—_

—and said, “He’s not my problem.” Turning on his heel, Roque walked away.

“Take him away,” Wade ordered. “Let’s get back to the boat.”

Roque suddenly turned around, and Clay allowed himself to hope, maybe Roque lured them here so that they could finish this once and for all, maybe Roque was playing double agent, maybe—

“I followed you everywhere, man. _Everywhere._ ” Roque’s voice was soft, rough. “Just – couldn’t do that shit no more.”

Clay didn’t know what Roque wanted from him. With a weary grin, he replied back just as calmly and quietly, “You’re gonna die very badly.”

There was a visible flinch there, and then Roque’s eyes went blank, cold. “Nah,” he responded casually, slapping Clay’s shoulder in an almost friendly gesture, and then he was moving back towards the crane that was attached to the container full of money Clay had entered last night. As the crate began to lift, the three guards dragged Clay out into the morning sunlight.

Heading to the van – shit, the very van that he and Roque had driven up to be their transport if need be – he saw Jensen, Pooch, and Cougar being led away by more guards. Jensen glanced over, curious, and Cougar looked positively baffled.

He didn’t have to tell them. He could let them think Roque had died fighting, or something.

But he didn’t owe that motherfucker anything.

“Roque,” he said flatly, one word, and Cougar stopped dead in his tracks, staring in shock. Pooch couldn’t believe it, either, and Jensen simply hung his head, jaw clenched. The guard behind Cougar shoved him roughly forward, even as the guard behind Clay shoved him into the van. The head guard moved to the driver’s seat, started the car, and as they drove away Clay watched as Jensen sank to his knees, grey patches of skin jumping erratically over his arms and neck, while a guard kicked Cougar’s knees forward, forcing him to the ground.

Pooch remained standing. For all that Pooch had not wanted to come, he’d die fighting.

Clay couldn’t watch anymore. Turning his head away, he looked over to the sun, the light dimmed enough by the LA haze that he could see the burning ball of gas in the early dawn.

Or, actually, he _would_ be able to see it, if there wasn’t a silhouette blocking his view.

A familiar silhouette.

With a rocket launcher.

 _Volatile_.

***

Picking the lock of his handcuffs was simple, and Clay even had as much time as he wanted because the van wasn’t leaking fuel or smoking from where the driver had ran it into a shipping container when Clay had been choking the life out of him. From there it was a quick step to stripping the guards of their guns and then exiting the backseat to go and find his men. The circle of dead or unconscious guards wasn’t a surprise in the least, but the fact that his men had left some of the guys alive, well… That was either sloppy or merciful. Clay wasn’t certain at this point which one he wanted to believe. At least the guys alive were handcuffed (properly, hands behind their back and hogtied to their shoelaces to add to the difficulty) and all guns and weaponry had been stripped.

Clay followed the blood trail – shit, that wasn’t good, that his men were leaving a _blood trail_ – and came upon Jensen leaning against the wall of shipping containers, skin fluctuating wildly, Pooch on the ground (fuck, shot in both legs, how the hell was he going to get them out of this mess with Pooch as, almost literally, deadweight? With Roque gone, they’d need every man on point, and shit, this was all his fucking fault), and Cougar looking as calm as ever, but when Clay looked close, there was tawny fur at Cougar’s neck and wrists, his limbs just _slightly_ twisted, small enough that at first glance you wouldn’t see it but enough that you’d still realize something was off with proportions.

And, well, shit, with the explosions and everything, the authorities were going to come one way or the other. Either they’d get free or not – the op was blown anyway.

“Cougs,” Pooch said, and Cougar instantly gave over an extra gun to the man on the ground.

“You guys need to transform – go right ahead. I don’t think it matters much at this point,” Clay began, but he was interrupted by Aisha’s snarled, “ _Clay!_ ”

He turned around and looked at this young woman – and young was right, because fuck, he was nearing forty-six and Aisha had to be twenty-eight, twenty-nine, tops, just above Jensen’s age, and he hadn’t cared before but with the new information that Aisha was Fadhil’s daughter, that she was after Max because of her _dad_ …

Then it registered that he’d talked about Cougar and Jensen’s other forms in front of her, and while he was trying to figure out whether that was a good or bad thing, she stormed forward, gun trained on his chest. “Did you kill him?” she demanded, voice cold but her eyes – goddamn, her eyes were so fucking _vulnerable_ …

One part of his brain suggested that if she was that fixated on Clay and the situation with Max, she probably didn’t overhear or care about his veiled comments about transformation. Not, of course, that she couldn’t look over and see that _something_ was wrong with Jensen and Cougar…

“My father found out about Max’s real plans,” she said in that deadly cold voice. “He was going to _stop_ him.” A breath of time, and then she repeated, “Did you. Kill. Him.”

Like with Pooch last night, Clay had no choice but to give an honest answer. “Yes.”

That shook her. A flinch, her face twisting as she fought to keep her emotions in, and Clay didn’t know how to make it better, didn’t know how to explain that, okay yeah, Fadhil was her dad, but Fadhil was also someone with a laundry list of flaws and using kids as drug mules was just one of the many bad things he’d done. “Aisha – he was a bad man.”

Shit, that sounded a lot worse out loud than it had in his head.

Aisha agreed. “ _It doesn’t matter!_ ” she snarled, and the tattoo on her upper right shoulder glowed.

_Glowed._

“I know,” he said softly, and he could feel the weight of his men’s gazes on his back, focusing on him, and they really did not have time for this shit and fuck, _why was her tattoo glowing_? “You can kill me right now,” he offered, trying to keep his voice level, trying to somehow reach out and reassure even though shit, he’d never had to do it before, how the hell did you act reassuring with anyone, let alone a kid looking for their father? “Or you can let me help you do what you need to do,” he finally said. “Either way, I get it.”

_Her tattoo was glowing, what the fuck?!_

She bit her lip, and for one single heartbeat he thought she was going to kill him—

Then her gun moved past him and he had a split second of fear, worried that she was going to kill his men instead of him, tear him to bits by ripping away what was left of his team, but her tattoo was pulsating now. Whipping around he saw Jensen cringing against one of the shipping containers – and three Chryon personnel on the ground.

He turned back to look at her ( _her tattoo wasn’t glowing anymore, what the hell?!_ ) and she met his gaze levelly, and her voice was so matter-of-fact that if it wasn’t for the tears streaking down her cheeks he’d have had no clue about her emotional state at all. “Let’s go get Max.”

Alright, then. Clay was… just going to roll with it.

“Wade said boat,” he began, and then Jensen interrupted.

“Wait, okay, okay, I know you guys are all badasses and I’m _not_ , but what the _fuck_ your fucking arm was _glowing_ Aisha—”

“Do we have time for this?” she demanded, eyes hard as she stared at him. “You’re fighting your other form enough as it is, and we need you able to shoot.”

There was dead silence. Cougar – who had tipped his hat at her in thanks for her save, suddenly gained an intensity and whispered, “ _Bruja_.”

Slanting her eyes over at Cougar, she refused to answer and instead looked expectantly at Clay.

Clay swallowed and continued, “That means we’re at the docks. Pooch, can you stand?”

Pooch, who looked calm though Clay could see the tightness in Pooch’s eyes and nervousness as he yanked the gun onto his back, looked up at Clay incredulously. “Oh! Oh, this is _stupid question day._ This is stupid question day… and nobody decided to tell me. No, that’s cool, that’s _awesome_ —”

“C’mon, Legless Pooch,” Jensen said affectionately, leaning down to grab at Pooch’s hand. “I gotcha.”

Before Jensen could pull Pooch up, Aisha was kneeling down beside Pooch, slipping a vial out from a pocket and opening it. Immediately, Cougar’s gun was pressed to her temple.

Clay licked his lips. “Aisha?”

Both Pooch and Jensen were silent, hesitating, and Cougar looked like he was moments away from blowing her brains out. Huffing out a snarl, Aisha looked at Cougar and said pointedly, “If I wanted you dead, you would be so already.”

Precious seconds ticked by before Cougar lowered his gun, and then she was dropping some of the liquid on Pooch’s legs – shit, looked like one might have hit the bone, but his left leg looked like it had just hit the meat of the thigh and gone out, no major arteries hit _thank god_.

“Aaaand—” Jensen dragged out, looking at Aisha suspiciously. “That was…?”

“Something that’ll help him walk. It won’t heal him completely, but it’ll help the blood clot and numb the pain. Give it five minutes or so, best if we could get some bandages on it to keep the balm from drying out before it has a chance to work. If we could _go_ now?”

The four Losers looked at one another before Cougar bent to grab Pooch’s other hand and help Pooch into a standing position so that Jensen could sling Pooch over his shoulder, fireman-carry style.

There would be so, _so_ much explaining when this was over.

“Heeere we go,” Jensen grunted, shifting so that Pooch wouldn’t be too discomforted, and he was pale but the wound on his arm was probably no more than a small distraction. So Clay hoped – he needed them as close to the top of their game as possible.

“Alright, let’s move,” he said, and Cougar was out first, eyes scanning the surroundings while Pooch slung the gun down so that he could guard Jensen’s back, Jensen’s bad arm holding the gun steady at his side.

“This isn’t over yet,” Aisha murmured threateningly before stalking past him and following his team.

They made their way out of the inner compound, into the van that had been left conveniently for them ( _let’s hope this lucky streak holds_ ) and all their gear was still there – ammo, medical supplies, and as Cougar jumped into the driver’s seat and Jensen took passenger’s, Clay and Aisha pulled Pooch into the back and Clay immediately began wrapping Pooch’s legs, mindful of what Aisha had said earlier.

Pooch was looking at her warily, and ended up saying, “So you’re really a witch?”

With a faint smile, she shook her head. “No. I’m not really a witch.”

Pooch stared for another moment before shaking his head. “Clay, man, this is too fucking much right now.”

“You’re telling me?” Clay grunted as he finished off wrapping Pooch’s legs and sat back.

Cougar turned the car towards the nearest dock, and yeah, there were Chryon personnel, and the fence was flimsy enough and the chain loose enough that Cougar could probably ram right through it. All guns were fully loaded, extra ammo tucked away where they could, and Clay just prayed their lucky streak would stick with them, they only needed it for a little while longer…

The gate crashed in, a shriek of tortured metal and the van bumped over it, even as Wade and the Chryon security forces opened fire. Tires blew out, and Cougar twisted the van broadside and brought it to a stop.

There was a pause in the gunfire.

Clay came out of the back doors first, with a burst of machine gunfire, taking down the closest two. Pooch shot from his side, and then Aisha was crawling past him and Cougar was bursting out the door and leveling his long-range rifle over the hood to take out two more. A brief glance gave Clay the gist of the situation – Wade before them with Chyron forces, a plane parked on a tiny runway (how the hell had they landed?) loading up with money and Roque overseeing.

Clay’s vision went red.

“I got Roque; the rest of you get Wade,” he snapped out, adding (unnecessarily, he realized afterwards), “Cougar, run point cover!”

And then he was off, pounding towards Roque, barely hearing Jensen’s “Legless Pooch and I are on it! C’mon, buddy!”

***

Turning the corner, Clay leapt over the stairs, shooting the person-shaped blur, as he made his way towards the plane. Goddamnit, he had _promised_ Roque he’d die badly, and he was going to keep his fucking promise one way or another. Roque had betrayed them, left them to die, and it didn’t matter what was off about him, that didn’t change the fact that Roque betrayed what Clay had seen as family. They had been a unit, and he’d given Roque opportunities to walk, he could’ve left when they were on that boat, he understood Roque’s frustration, but Roque just wasn’t seeing it from his perspective and _shit_ that was close, out of bullets but Roque wasn’t—

Clay ducked behind a shipping container, feeling for ammo – but the ammo he’d grabbed had been for the guns he and his team had brought, not these he’d lifted off of the guards in the car, and so shit, he might as well abandon them and pull his pistol out even though the pistol had a severely limited amount of bullets and Clay preferred a lot of bullets if he was going after his ex-SIC that Aisha had _warned_ him was a better fighter than Clay himself.

And, in the deeper part of his mind, Clay agreed. Roque was around the same age as Clay, both of them being young and stupid through Basic together, but Roque had always had a knack for weaponry and fighting while Clay’s had been strategy and people management skills.

Well. He’d _thought_ he had people management skills, what was needed to balance his team members’ needs. Apparently not.

Spinning around the corner, both hands bracing the gun, Clay shot at Roque, and only about two seconds after Roque’s bullets ran out, Clay’s did as well.

“ _Shit!_ ” he snarled, just as Roque ducked in and came out with a knife.

Fucking Roque with his fucking knives and fuck-all knows how many more he has on him—

Clay ducked to the side, came up under the wing even as Roque jumped over the railing of the stairs and brought his knife down in a stabbing motion that Clay just barely managed to block.

Something was wrong.

Roque kicked Clay in the stomach and it was as if all the breath was slammed out of his lungs and he went _flying_ across the pavement. When the hell did Roque get superhuman strength? Seriously, what the hell was going on in the world?

Not that Clay had time to actually contemplate this as he shoved off of the ground and faced Roque, trading quips and barbs because he was busy trying to make his mind work properly.

Roque was superhumanly fast, and the one plus that was on Clay’s side was that Roque either didn’t notice or wasn’t expecting it either, because the fastness came more when Roque moved forward or backward, not when he reached out and sliced at Clay – and _damn_ , but he sliced at Clay and those cuts were fucking _deep_ even though the way they were aimed, it seemed more like it was meant to be shallow.

Then Roque twisted around, grabbed Clay from behind and snarled, “Now I’m _definitely_ gonna cut your head off,” and Clay had a moment to recognize that Roque’s voice had taken on a bestial edge the same way that Cougar’s voice changed when he was extremely angry.

“Go for it,” he grunted, pushing those thoughts to the side because, what, did Roque get dosed up with the formula or something between Miami and here? That seemed pretty fucking impossible; even if Max had done that to Roque (which might explain the sudden super-strength and the scar – but no, it really didn’t explain the scar at all), Procedural soldiers had to be kept isolated for three days as their bodies underwent the change to an animal and back again. Roque had not been out of their reach for a span of three days in any stretch of the imagination.

Of course, this wasn’t as important as the fucking _knife at his throat_ and he jerked his elbow up into Roque’s face, twisted Roque around and _slammed_ his fist down on Roque’s elbow, feeling the crack beneath his hand.

In hindsight, he probably should have been expecting that backward kick.

He made his way up the stairs after Roque, anger riding him hard, and he punched Roque in the stomach, grabbed at his eye and just _pushed_ , and then Roque’s foot was planted firmly in Clay’s gut and Clay practically _flew_ out of the plane, hitting the tarmac hard and he was out.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah. 126k+. And the plus is a just-barely-there plus. Also, this was supposed to go up three hours ago because STATS HOMEWORK WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THAT HARD TO INTERPRET OH MY GOD.
> 
> Yeah. Ahem. My brain's hurting from math. I will probably solve that by alternatively turning into a potato in front of tumblr and typing up more of this story. Also, I'm thinking Wednesday's the good day to update from now on? Unless people have a preference for Monday, but as this is my hump day it will cheer me up, and it gives me Monday to type while I'm sitting uselessly for my office hours as a TA.
> 
> Also. Um. No bad-ass sniper shot by Cougar? Sorry! I hope what takes place instead is still good! o.o;;
> 
> And thank you all for your lovely comments. I'm probably going to go one by one and respond to each of them now. And try not to get too hungry. >.> You guys have a way of describing like, the perfect toast...

From finding the little red lights trained on him to being dragged out in the early morning’s light by guards alongside Jensen and Pooch, Cougar was sure Clay and Roque were going to get them out. Cornered, the two of them were like hurricanes, and knowing that their team was in danger only upgraded them to tornados – no more flight paths, no more charted courses, just pure chaos and destruction.

But then he saw Clay being walked out, in handcuffs. And Cougar didn’t understand, he was trying to grasp the concept of Roque _dead_ , because why else wouldn’t Roque be there?

Clay saw his eyes, and there was a flicker of indecision before he said, voice flat, hard, “Roque.”

And Cougar _knew_.

He stopped walking, just staring, because yeah, he’d known Roque hadn’t been on board with this from the get go, that he’d been dragging his feet on this because of his own personal reasons but – to betray the team? To betray the Losers? Everything they stood for, everything they’d been? To betray _Clay_ and _Cougar_?

They were lined up, execution style, and Cougar’s nails were lengthening into claws, his teeth pressing sharply into his lips as they lengthened into a cougar’s canines, only he couldn’t transform, not with the cuffs on, and next to him Jensen was breathing slow, trying to keep from transforming himself. The guards had made jokes about Jensen’s “skin condition” and it kinda sucked that Jensen was that pale because patches of grey showing up was _obvious_ – as it was, the tawny fur that was cropping up over Cougar’s forearms pretty much blended in with his skin and no one was really noticing. They didn’t need someone to figure out they were Procedurals and treat them accordingly. They were already dead men, after all.

Then the guard shot Pooch in both legs.

Cougar lunged, and it was only the guard’s grab at his collar that kept him from throwing his body over Pooch’s, and this was his _pack_ , his _pride_ , and no one, _no fucking one_ , damaged his pride. Hell, he was gearing up to transform completely, hoping that the shock of transformation would break the cuffs even if they mangled his paws, dodging the guard’s attempt to yank at his hat as he steeled himself for what most likely would be a painful transformation and instant death, but maybe it’d give Jake and Pooch time to get free—

The wind brought a familiar scent.

He slowed his panicked thoughts, letting a lazy grin curl over his features as he smoothed the overpowering need to transform. Aisha was here, and she had a fucking _rocket launcher_ , and they’d be fine, they were going to get out of it and this guard was going to die very, very, _very_ badly.

“Ooh,” Jensen murmured next to Cougar, and Cougar couldn’t even fault him for the appreciation because damn, Cougar was appreciating her pretty fucking much at the moment. “Now that’s a badass chick.”

She aimed at a gas pump area, and the distraction and subsequent flinching from shrapnel meant that Jensen was up, kicking, and if his kicks were a bit harder than normal, a bit more animalistic than normal, Cougar wasn’t going to say anything because he was slicing at the guards with the claws that were growing out of his fingernails. Pooch grabbed a gun, shot the guy who shot him, and then Cougar was standing over the guard with a dangerous, almost manic grin.

“Never. Touch. The hat. Mm?”

And then he slammed his heel hard enough into the guard’s head to make a visible dent.

The van that held Clay drove into a stack of shipping containers – Clay was fine, then. Jensen was breathing lightly, obviously trying to calm himself down, before snagging the keys off of a guard. He undid Cougar’s first, let Cougar undo his, before moving over to Pooch.

Cougar snagged the guns, because, you know. Guns. They’d stripped Cougar of his favorite rifle, the bastards. He almost wished he could go looking for it again.

Keeping the minutiae of being human in mind helped hold back the beast long enough to help Pooch up, get him to a place where it was marginally safe, and wait for Clay. Of course, waiting for Clay also meant waiting for Aisha and if Cougar, Pooch, and Jensen were willing to forget she was Fadhil’s daughter for the moment, it was obvious that Aisha was going to shove it in their faces.

Clay was trying to calm her down, comfort – even though, fuck, Clay, could you be any worse at it? – when her tattoo started glowing.

Glowing-glowing. Shining light blue and shimmering. Like – shit. Like fairy dust.

 _Bruja_.

Witch was the only explanation why. And while Cougar had suspected that some kind of supernatural agent had been at work for the formula, it was one thing to suspect it and another to have confirmation, and hell if he knew what to do with the information.

Pooch let out a small noise of surprise, and Jensen was blinking rapidly, looking from Aisha to Cougar as if confirmation that he wasn’t the only one seeing this. As fascinating as it all was, however, it didn’t change the fact that they were in hostile territory and really, really shouldn’t have let their guard drop. Aisha taking out those guards was a good thing, and Cougar saluted her for it.

Clay began to come up with a rough plan, overruling Jensen’s loud objections to the tattoo incident, and Jensen bent down to help Pooch up, when suddenly Aisha was there with a random vial and shit, non-pride people should not be near Cougar’s pride at the moment, and before he even realized it he had the gun to her temple.

It was obvious that Pooch and Jensen weren’t going to stop him if he put a bullet in her head, but Clay took a half-step forward. “Aisha?” Clay asked.

“If I wanted you dead,” she said almost conversationally, looking up at Cougar, “you would be so already.”

Cougar held her gaze, nostrils flaring, aware that his body was struggling to shift and his famed self-control was wearing thin. Finally, Cougar managed to convince his hindbrain that Aisha wasn’t about to pour acid on Pooch’s legs.

“Aaaand, that was?” Jensen asked pointedly.

Aisha pushed up from the ground, stepping back and away from the three of them, explaining succinctly about some magic balm that would help Pooch be able to move without too much trouble. For a while, at least, and yes, Cougar meant magic in a very serious way. Keeping one hand on the gun’s trigger, Cougar offered Pooch his other hand and helped haul Pooch up and over Jensen’s shoulder. Once he was certain Pooch was comfortable, Cougar was out, moving confidently, scanning for any movement as they made their (bloody) way to the van and then Cougar was grabbing the keys from Pooch – Chryon security obviously saw no reason to divest them of personal effects beyond weapons – and jumping into the driver’s seat. Everyone piled in, and then Cougar started the car.

Ignoring the conversation in the back, Cougar followed his instincts and took the second, not first, drive to the docks and grinned viciously when he saw confirmation of his choice. Everyone was ready, Jensen was hyper-focused even as his blue eyes kept flashing horse-brown and grey wound over his skin. The discoloration shifted, though it never lessened, and Cougar had a moment’s admiration for Jensen’s ability to hold himself in check before he drove through the gate.

Cougar disliked being in the thick of things. Oh, he could, of course; he had been, before. But give him a choice, and he’d be up, crouching, watching everything through a scope and taking his shots at his leisure. The van immediately took on fire, tires blowing out, and they’d lined the inside of the van to block gunfire for a short time, but it wasn’t effective and sitting in the van wouldn’t get any of their objectives achieved. The minute there was a lull in gunfire, Clay was out the back, moving out of the way so Pooch could fire, and then Aisha and Jensen were climbing over Pooch to get out. Cougar had waited until Jensen was completely out of the passenger’s seat before spinning out of the door, bringing his gun up and over the hood, and firing quickly, concisely.

“I got Roque; the rest of you get Wade,” Clay called out. “Cougar, run point cover!”

And then Clay was pounding away, even as Jensen said cheerily, “Legless Pooch and I are on it! C’mon, buddy,” and then helped support Pooch out and to cover. Aisha and Cougar broke off in the other direction. Cougar needed to get up high – his eyes immediately caught on the crane, the perfect position to see everywhere.

“Call me Legless Pooch one more time and your name’s gonna be Headless Jensen,” he heard Pooch shout.

Cougar fought not to smile.

It took a bit more concentration than he had expected, to line up his shots the way he wanted them, in part because his fingers kept trying to transform into claws and he really didn’t need that at the moment. Still, laying down cover fire was simple enough and let Aisha move across the area, and then she laid down cover for Cougar. He steadily made his way over to the crane, Aisha giving him cover and helping him in turns, and the minute he reached the arm he began climbing as quickly as possible, making leaps and jumps that he knew he really shouldn’t be able to make.

Did that count as full transformation? If you were using the animal abilities while in human form? Was the army already on its way to rain destruction down on them and capture them all?

His grip slipped and he nearly fell, scrabbling at the smooth metal until black claws jutted out from his fingernails and tore into the metal with a shriek like nails on a chalkboard.

Right. More climbing, less philosophizing.

Beneath him, Aisha shot at forces who noticed him scrambling up the crane and Pooch – Pooch was walking. Sort of. Close enough that he could lay down suppressive fire and let Jensen take off towards Wade and the few remaining Chryon personnel guarding the front of a grey shipping container. And Jensen _took off_ – those jumps, that speed, was not human. His limbs were subtly different, too, and a warning snarl in his earpiece let him know that Aisha did not appreciate his taking the time to stop and ogle his boyfriend. Well, she didn’t quite know that was what he was doing, but her pointed comment about watching the action better from a stable position was accurate, so he continued his journey upwards.

“Hey!”

The shout was loud, and not particularly human-sounding. Cougar, who had just gotten to the top of the crane and was picking off the last of the Chryon personnel closing in near Pooch (Aisha was doing just fine on her side, and Pooch needed the cover more than her or Jensen at the moment), looked down to see Wade snarling.

 _Snarling_. Skin darkening, fangs growing, chest expanding to lend his voice the volume that let Cougar hear it all the way up here.

“That sonuvabitch is stealing our cash!”

Cougar’s eyes flickered over to the plane, which was beginning to taxi around, and Clay, who was lying on the ground. Unconscious? Cougar relayed that quickly to Aisha, focusing more on aiming at Wade.

Who was ripping his shirt off and transforming.

Not into any recognizable animal that _Cougar_ knew. No, Wade was looking vaguely wolf-ish, but too big to be one. Shit, looking at how he measured up against the container, he was easily the size of a small car, maybe a van. It was a pitch black wolf, with a lightly grey underbelly and blood-and-gold eyes practically glowing in the heavy skull.

“Are you seeing this shit, Cougs?!” Jensen’s freaked out voice came over the comms, even as Pooch started swearing up a storm. “ _Are you seeing this? It’s a fucking bio-weapon, I told you, I fucking told you—”_

“Jensen, stand down!” Pooch barked as Jensen broke cover, throwing his own shirt off and undoing his pants, kicking out of shoes, _leaping_ forward and turning into a horse that was about the size of this giant, hulking wolf that turned to look at Jensen almost in amusement.

Cougar shot off five shots in quick succession, getting head, chest, jaw, head, neck, and the wolf stumbled back onto its hind legs, twisting.

The wounds started healing over.

“ _Mierda_!” Cougar snarled, and emptied the rest of his clip into the creature that turned into Wade. Aisha was at Pooch’s side, handing him her gun, and Pooch added to the fire though they had to be careful, now – Jensen was engaging the wolf, kicking and rearing and snaking his neck in to bite, over and over, running circles around the wolf which was apparently disoriented enough by the gunfire and Jensen’s attacks that its strikes were largely uncoordinated. Still, an ‘uncoordinated’ snap laid Jensen’s foreleg open to the bone, knocked Jensen to the ground.

But the wolf really didn’t seem to be focusing on them; it was heading for the plane, and even if it was freakishly large a car didn’t compare to a plane for size. Jensen obviously wasn’t well enough to run after the wolf, and Cougar’s bullets weren’t doing shit. Between it and the plane was Clay, still down on the ground, and Aisha shouting in the comm for Clay to get up, get moving, get Wade.

With a snarl, Cougar jerked his shirt off over his head, placed his hat and rifle down, undid the belt and shoved the jeans down, kicked the boots off. He breathed in and out, once, twice, fixing the objective in his mind.

_Keep him from reaching Clay._

Closing his eyes for a heartbeat, he shifted into his other skin.

Cougar did not always believe the myths his _abuelita_ had told him, or her stubborn insistence that she had _experienced_ the stories, that witches were real, in the face of his parents’ disapproving lectures about filling his head with stories. After she passed away and when his parents had screamed and shouted at one another, and he’d snuck out with his sister to stare at the stars, he’d entertained the fantasy of the world being so big, surely something supernatural existed out there? When he’d been approached by the scientists, asked to take part in the Procedure, he’d agreed, because this was the closest he’d get to that other world. He’d known immediately what he was.

He was a cougar, and he would always be a cougar.

He opened tawny eyes and stretched, taking in the senses and strength that flooded his body. Jensen acted playful in horse form, even during a mission, almost as if his animal and human were one and it had his personality as much as he had its quirks. Cougar was different in that the cougar was much, much more than Cougar could ever be. He had such excellent control because, whenever he transformed, there was a red mist that descended over his vision and people could – and had, before – died without Cougar ever remembering going after them. Working with Jensen’s horse form had calmed Cougar’s cougar, but not enough to ever temper the unquenchable rage that suffused his other form.

His target was approaching, about to run underneath the crane, and so Cougar bunched his hind legs and _leapt_.

***

Had he thought this through, not been already dancing on the fine edge of control, he would not have done so. He was still high up on the crane, more than ten stories up, and a fall from there – even a controlled fall – would be disastrous.

He hadn’t been thinking, though. He’d emptied his gun into this creature, watch it slice at Jensen, and then watched it barrel down at Clay, and his blood had already been pumping, his cougar restless, and so he leapt down from the crane, silent and deadly.

His landing left a lot to be desired; he hit the wolf in mid-back, rolled off, and was promptly crushed because the wolf fell over on top of him. With a snarl, he tore at the fur and flesh on top of him, clawing to get free. He’d snapped the wolf’s spine, and if he was lucky that would hold the wolf for another few moments.

Growling horribly, the weight on top of him twisted and a huge muzzle appeared at his side. Claws extended, he slashed out, scoring lines down the face and through the left eye.

The wolf jerked back, which gave him enough room to maneuver and he jumped out. Cougar was at a clear disadvantage here; he wasn’t even half the size of Jensen’s horse, and Jensen’s horse was _smaller_ than this wolf. The best thing to do would be to get onto the wolf’s back, bite through the spine.

Then again, he’d just cracked the spine and already the wolf was starting to move its back legs.

Not sure what to do, or how to go about ending this wolf, Cougar launched himself again to land, claws extended, right behind the wolf’s head. With an indignant snarl, the wolf shook his head and Cougar loosened one paw to rake claws over and over the wolf’s eyes.

Movement out of the corner of his eye made him turn. The plane – it was taxiing, moving straight for him and the wolf. Between the two of them and the plane, Clay was getting to his feet, staring in surprise at Cougar and the wolf.

Would being run over by a plane kill this wolf?

Cougar could only hope. Which meant he had to keep the wolf distracted enough to stay right here, and Clay needed to get out of the way. Admittedly, Clay was pretty bad about doing things in a sane and rational matter, but surely he wouldn’t just _stand_ there?

That was about as much as he could get through his head before the wolf was standing up. With a vicious snarl, he sank his teeth deep into one of the ears – not stupid enough to go for the neck, because the ruff would not only be distasteful but keep him from getting a firm grip.

A deep howl rose from the wolf’s throat, and those blood-gold eyes promised murder. The wolf snapped his head forward and Cougar had to let go of the ear or go flying face first onto the plane.

Bullets peppered the wolf from the side, staggering it one way, and Cougar turned to see Aisha there with two machine guns. Not Jensen, at least – the crazy horse knew better, Cougar hoped, than to try and make his way over here with his bad front leg – and not Pooch, so Cougar didn’t have to worry about damage to bystanders in the least.

The wolf heaved, rolling over onto its back to try and slam Cougar against the ground, but Cougar had been expecting that (from the beginning, really, as that’s what he would’ve done the moment someone jumped on _his_ back, but better late than never, he supposed) and shoved off right before the wolf hit the ground, then darted up to sink claws into the wolf’s underbelly and dig his jaws in deep.

A piercing howl cut through the air and the wolf’s head darted down to lay Cougar’s shoulder open to the bone. Hissing and spitting in displeasure, Cougar leapt away and crouched on the concrete, tail lashing the air.

At least the wound he’d inflicted in the wolf’s stomach was definitely painful. Cougar could see glistening organs and blood pooling out of the wound to stain the fur a darker grey.

Huh. The wounds were closing much slower than they had before.

With a wounded snarl, the wolf leapt at Cougar and Cougar barely had the time to dart to the side as those fangs tore into his flank. Corkscrewing his body, Cougar twisted and jumped after the wolf, jumping back up on its back and digging deep furrows on either side of its spine.

The wolf bucked and twisted, and the plane was almost at them, almost there, and then the wolf twisted his head, trying to drag Cougar (who was ripping chunks out of his neck and flank) off of his back. Cougar snarled and lashed out, claws scoring deep across both of the wolf’s eyes and raked furrows down its muzzle. Whining and growling in confusion, the wolf leapt up in the air as if to slam itself back down to dislodge Cougar from its back. Cougar barely looked up in time to see that the plane was too close; they were going to get hit and the wolf – _Wade_ – had thrown them both forward at the engine.

Yowling, Cougar jumped to the side and hit the top of the plane, hard, feeling one of the bones in his hind legs twist unnaturally. The wolf was not as lucky; Wade barely had enough time to turn his head forward before he slammed through the engine and a fine mist of blood sprayed the air.

And then the engine exploded.

Cougar was thrown from the plane and something, somewhere inside his mind, suddenly _snapped_. It was enough to daze him and he hit the side of a shipping container hard, slumping down onto the ground and unable to react to his surroundings in any way.

He didn’t know how long it took for him to come back around, but he was able to recognize that his head was in the lap of someone ( _Clay_ , his sense of smell informed him) and that someone else was running their hands over his wounds professionally and more than a little bit carelessly ( _Aisha_ , he identified moments later).

He could also hear, in Clay’s and Aisha’s headsets, Jensen’s voice: “Clay, we have a situation here.” Jensen’s voice was strained, and Cougar roused himself so that he could lift his head up independently, shifting.

“Hold still,” Aisha snarled.

Jensen’s voice continued, “I’m looking at a giant, vibrating Easter egg from hell and no Max. And a paused countdown.”

Pooch’s voice was indistinct, but before Cougar could focus his hearing to be able to pick out anything else, Clay was standing up. “I think I see him,” he said softly, and then he was running off.

“Sonuva _bitch_ ,” Aisha hissed, tearing a piece of bandage and wrapping it tightly around Cougar’s leg. “I need to go after Max; you stay put.”

Like Cougar was going to let her interrupt Clay. Twisting around, he placed one paw firmly on her knee, claws just pressing through the skintight pants she was wearing. Beads of blood welled up from each claw.

She met his gaze, her eyes hot and furious, and he lifted his lips in a snarl.

The standoff continued a moment before Aisha’s gaze dropped. “You need to transform back if you think I have any hope of getting you back to your team,” she said, tone short and clipped. Cougar couldn’t care less; this was the bitch, after all, who’d shot Jensen and not been upfront with them from the start. Interfering with her plans wasn’t just appropriate at the moment but was personally satisfying.

He began the painful process to transform back to human while wounded.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this, dear readers, is the end of the movie, and the branching off into my own head-canon. Typing is going slower here because while I had, pre-canon, something to build _to_ , post-canon I have to build _off_. This is a bit more difficult than I expected, largely because I don't want to lose the characterizations. I'm already struggling with Pooch and Jensen's interactions. Cougar, at least, remains fairly easy, as does Jensen. Clay is. Eh. A neutral party?
> 
> Plus I have original characters now (or, kinda. Jolene and Emily and Raina do not show up enough in the movie for me to build characterizations around movie-canon, so they're all kinda OC's). I am also trying to figure out just how much of the supernatural/fantasy world I want to intersect with the human world. And now the nation-hopping starts, except I have never been overseas (okay, once when I was 3 doesn't count) so I may be terribly mangling other cultures without realizing. If you see something weird/wrong/inexplicable please let me know? If it's supposed to be that way I'll say, but most likely it's my ignorance, not a plot device, that you're seeing.
> 
> Wow. A lot of notes. Um. 129k+ of words. Thank you all for your comments, continued readership, and support. You really mean so, so much to me. 5000+ hits and I just can't even breathe, it's so amazing. This weekend I'll post up one of the 'deleted' scenes for everyone, probably something about Jensen and Cougar in their other forms, as a treat! I hope that's an adequate celebration?

Clay saw a slim man dressed in a sharp suit from a distance as Jensen started talking in his ear. The man was walking quickly – too quickly to be called a walk, or a controlled movement, and quickly enough to be seen as a retreat. Wasn’t dressed in Chryon uniform, wasn’t armed, and was in a rich suit.

Cougar was up, shifting and starting to make small complaining noises in the back of his throat at Aisha, so it was safe to leave him with her and go after Max. Nabbing one of the two machine guns Aisha had put down when she’d started to do triage on Cougar’s animal body, he ran to the crane elevator and got there just as Max closed the elevator’s door and turned on the mechanism.

“Ah, _shit_ ,” Clay growled, jumping the first step and running as fast as he could up the flight of stairs. The only good thing about crane elevators were that they were _slow_ , and Max wasn’t looking down or out; his back was to the stairs completely, and as long as Clay didn’t make too much noise his footsteps would be drowned out by the whir of the pulley system.

As he ran, his mind had time to go over the frankly _unbelievable_ things he’d seen today. Aisha’s tattoo, that ‘balm’ she had put on Pooch’s legs, that _fucking monstrous wolf_ that had come barreling down the make-shift runway. His world was suddenly a hell of a lot larger than he expected and he trusted that he’d get an explanation soon because there’s only so many punches he could roll with before he’d start pissing his pants. He’d nearly lost it at that wolf, frankly.

Finally, he made it to the top, and Max was talking indistinctly – not loud enough for Clay to hear him back here, but _definitely_ loud enough for Clay to confirm that this was, in fact, the man that had been on that radio. Lifting his rifle, he jogged closer to see Max waving around a cellphone.

“What’s the matter?” he panted, wishing he didn’t sound so out of breath. Damn, he was getting _old_ , and maybe Roque had a point about retirement and letting the young dogs run the show.

Roque. Clay steeled himself against the wave of hurt – Roque had been in the plane when it had blown up. It was over. And he was going to make the instigator of all the Losers’ problems pay right here and right now.

“Crappy reception?” he finished as Max turned around.

Max was an almost nondescript man. Nothing stood out about him; he wasn’t tall, but wasn’t short, wasn’t particularly handsome or striking but he wasn’t ugly or off-putting, either. He was lightly tanned, tie still neat and the only sign of the recent developments and their negative consequences for him was the undone buttons and the faint traces of dirt on the edges of his shiny shoes.

A helicopter rose up from a boat sitting in the harbor and approached them; Clay just casually lifted the machine gun and sprayed it with bullets as Max watched him through lizard eyes, phone casually in his hand and posture relaxed.

The helicopter flew off.

Max lifted an eyebrow at him. “That was my ride,” he said blandly.

The fact that he could just stand there, after he’d thrown their lives away so casually, after he’d torn them apart and put them through hell, made Clay take a deep breath in to steady the tide of anger. “Bummer,” he said as neutrally as he could manage.

Tilting his head, Max grinned a little, and Clay could swear that fangs flashed in the man’s mouth. Was he a – a Procedural? Something like that? “Clay, is it?” the other man asked curiously.

“Colonel,” Clay growled, because fuck Roque and fuck the army that denied him. He _was_ a colonel and that was it.

“Mmm.” Max nodded, then held up the gloved hand to reveal what was clasped in it. “So you know what this is, then?”

 _Shit._ Giant vibrating Easter egg must be a bomb of some kind. “Remote pressure trigger,” Clay answered easily, running through plans in his head to secure the trigger and capture Max and not coming out with a lot of options.

“Very good!” Max said, beaming, as if Clay had figured out a riddle. “I release the button for ten seconds and everything goes _boom_ ,” he said, emphasize the last word almost gleefully. “Or, _hiss_ , as it may be.” He giggled – _giggled_ – and then let out a sigh. “So, since you can’t _shoot_ me—”

Clay shot him in the shoulder.

The impact knocked Max back and around, and he bent over and let out a sharp cry of surprise. “ _Gahh_. God _damn_ it!” He stamped his foot twice and breathed out slowly.

“You wanna try that again?” Clay murmured, and if he was taking dark satisfaction in the man’s pain, well, no one could blame him, really.

Max righted himself, shrugging his shoulders and touching at the blood that oozed out from the wound. “That hurt,” he repeated indignantly. “Are you having fun? Enjoying yourself? ‘ _Ooh, let’s shoot the baddie full of holes, that’ll solve the job!_ ’ So _boring_ , all you humans.”

Clay wasn’t going to touch that statement with a ten-foot pole. “Give me the trigger and I’ll let you live.”

Max burst out laughing. “Sonny, if you think you can end me, you’ve got no idea the situation you’re in. However, you’re funny and amusing and you smell like that witch Rhadiyya’s get. So I’ll do you a favor and explain to you the absolute _worst_ thing about pretending to be the good guy.” His smile turned threatening, hell, if Clay was a man that got spooked easy he’d call it _creepy_ , and he prodded his wound with his ungloved hand, bringing blood-stained fingers up to his mouth to lick slowly over each digit.

“Oh? What’s that?” Clay said, keeping his gun on Max and moving a half-step closer, ready to snatch the trigger.

That queer smile curled at the corners of Max’s mouth, and with a smack of his lips, he popped his finger out of his mouth and gestured expansively. “Having to make decisions like this.”

And with that same mad smile on his face, he tossed the pressure trigger over his shoulder and stepped to the side.

Clay was already moving, running down to the edge and throwing himself off the top of the crane, chasing the trigger down into the water. He could have sworn, as he passed Max, Max’s eyes shined like miniature red suns, but he wasn’t paying attention to Max ( _though was that fucking bastard waving at him?!_), he was focused exclusively at finding and grabbing that trigger.

It seemed like hours, _days_ , before his hand grabbed the floating object and he pressed his thumb down _hard_ on the trigger, holding it in place and kicking back up to the surface. His lungs weren’t burning, weren’t even tired, which means it really had to be only seconds, but that adrenaline rush was draining out of him fast and he was so, so tired of this all. He had _had_ Max in his hand, right there in front of him. To have to choose like that – okay, no choice, he wouldn’t condemn the city to whatever explosion Max had cooked up – but knowing he had had the guy responsible for everything right in front of him and Max had gotten away in the end _anyway_ …

Well. It had been satisfying to shoot him, at least.

He swam to the dock, dimly hearing the roar of a car’s engine, and dragged himself up the helpful ladder (probably used to get down onto small boats, but Clay really didn’t care why it was there beyond the fact that it made it that much easier to get out of the filthy water) onto dry land.

“Hey!” Jensen’s voice called out as his head cleared the top of the dock. “Look what the Pooch found!”

Glancing up at the crane, he saw that Max wasn’t there anymore. How Max had gotten down that fast, left the dock area, he had no clue. But there had been a whole _slew_ of supernatural events taking place left and right, and he fully intended to make Aisha explain. _Completely_.

Turning his attention back to his men, he saw Jensen’s upper right arm heavily bandaged, the hasty white wrapping turned red in a long line all the way down to his elbow. Aisha opened the back door of the car ( _yellow stretch Hummer? He’d have words with Jensen about appropriating criminal funds for his own amusement, again, later_) and Pooch opened the passenger seat door to twist his body, watching Clay get to his feet.

“Look what I found,” Clay responded wryly, and Pooch twisted around to grab something from between the seats (only Pooch would keep duct tape that on hand, really) and toss the roll towards Clay.

“That should do it,” he offered, and he sounded tired, but he was alive, and he was a little pale but not too bad. Not that much blood loss, then. Cougar, though – Cougar had been torn up badly.

Then Aisha came out of the car, and Cougar followed her out. Cougar’s upper chest underneath his vest was pretty much one big bandage (Jensen’s work, no doubt), and the shoulder that had been laid open was professionally wrapped (Aisha, most likely). The broken leg, though, that was nonexistent, practically. Clay could tell that Cougar’s leg was bothering him, but he stood at the ready, rifle in his hands and eyes scanning the area.

Throwing the roll of duct tape back, Clay sighed. “Disarmed.”

Jensen had come around the front of the car, opening his mouth to say something, and then his jeans’ pocket rang.

The four of them turned to look at Jensen, who shrugged. “What? I turned it off silent when I got in the car, okay?”

“Probably Max,” Aisha muttered as Jensen pulled it out and answered the phone.

Aisha’s prediction was confirmed when Jensen handed the phone over to Clay. Taking the device, Clay hesitated a moment before putting it to his ear.

“Hi, Max,” he drawled as Cougar moved past him, bringing the rifle’s scope up to survey the surrounding area.

“Colonel. Nice catch.” A pause, and then Max continued, “We could’ve shared the dream together. Now you’re back where you started.”

Clay looked over at Aisha, who knew more about this than he did, and grinned. “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t go that far,” he murmured.

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“Well, now I know what you look like.”

There was a muffled giggle on the line and then Max said casually, “Go ahead, ask that bitch’s daughter how much knowing what I look like helps.”

“Be seeing you soon, Max,” Clay promised, and he ended the call.

The Losers looked at him, and Jensen opened his mouth to say something but Cougar grabbed him and dragged him to the other side of the Hummer. Pooch took a look at Clay and Aisha and rolled his eyes before pulling his legs back in and closing the door.

Now technically ‘alone,’ Clay turned to Aisha and studied her. “You owe us an explanation.”

“It’s not my fault you have two members on your team that didn’t explain the otherworld to you,” Aisha responded.

Clay wasn’t sure how to respond to that, and so simply said, “Come with us.”

Aisha studied him a for a long minute, eyes judging, hard, and finally she stepped forward. “When this is over, and he’s dead,” she murmured, “you and I are gonna finish that dance.”

That was perfectly alright with Clay, when it came down to it. Nodding, he answered, “Fair enough.” It was her father, after all, and just because he hadn’t been a good man didn’t mean he hadn’t loved his daughter. But Clay was intimately familiar with the fact that family took care of family, either by helping relatives or taking them out when they went bad. Outsiders weren’t invited.

The sound of a car window being rolled down interrupted their stand-off. “Yo! Let’s go home!” Pooch called.

Aisha pushed past Clay and entered the Hummer. Biting his lip, Clay fought back the wide grin. “She is _volatile_ ,” he whispered to himself before climbing into the Hummer behind her.

And stared.

“Jensen, why did you think it was okay to bring along the vibrating Easter egg?!”

***

It was pouring rain, of course. Appropriate backdrop, in a way, but it still made for shit visibility.

Jensen and Aisha were in the bushes nearby, setting up a scrambler that would take the whole building off of any satellites’ camera. Jensen and Aisha both reported in when any electronic surveillance had been scrambled, both long- and short-distance.

Cougar was around the corner, keeping an eye out. This side of the building was the weakest, simply because of the renovations it was going through at the time, and Jensen had already hacked the records to figure out which floor and room Pooch would need. Clay stood by Pooch’s side to provide cover, just in case. After all, Max knew about their other connections, and Clay didn’t put it past Max to have snipers or a gun-team standing by.

Standing down in the brush outside the hospital, Clay could hear the bustle of people moving past Pooch. No hospital ever was still; even at nine pm, like now, there were people who were getting hurt, people who needed attention.

Babies being born.

Jolene’s voice came through the earpieces faintly, tinny but her ire clear. “Where have you _been_?”

There was a long moment, and Clay looked up at the unforgiving heavens, getting water in his eyes until he closed them, letting them wash over his face in place of tears.

“Traffic,” Pooch answered finally.

It felt like years later, but it was only six hours of Jolene’s pained screaming, shouting, and general curses and expletives spewing forth from her mouth when Pooch’s voice, awed and incredulous, came over the comms alongside a baby’s screaming. “It’s a boy. It’s a boy, Clay! He looks just like me!”

“Congrats,” Clay responded, voice heartfelt and sincere. If anyone deserved this, it was Pooch, loyal and steadfast above all the rest. They’d driven straight from the Port of LA to here, mostly because Jensen had fended off questions about the Easter egg (the name stuck, unfortunately) and refused to talk about it until their families were secured. Aisha likewise had seemed willing to wait on discussion about this ‘otherworld’ until they had time to catch their breaths.

Over the radio, there were background noises; doctors, and Jolene, Clay assumed, and then a click as Pooch turned off his headset. A dangerous decision in field; they still needed to be on the lookout for enemy forces. Not one Clay could deny or castigate Pooch for, though, and he held up the bottle of wine he’d gone out and bought. Cougar came over, still letting his eyes travel over the surrounding area, bandages clean (if a little soaked) and almost healed up – much faster than Clay would have expected Cougar to heal. Jensen and Aisha came out of the bushes, Jensen’s bandages gone (he’d healed faster than Cougar) but sporting a new bruise on his right cheek.

Clay raised an eyebrow at Aisha, who simply arched her own in return.

Jensen caught their by-play and said ruefully, “Don’t ask a woman what it’s like to go through labor.”

Cougar chuckled as Clay shook his head, offering the bottle. Each one took a sip, and then they made their way to the RV they’d kept. (The stretch Hummer was ridiculous, and they’d traded it to a contact for a shit-ton amount of ammo. Jensen had been mildly upset to see the car go, but Clay brought up the Easter egg still sitting in the middle of their gear and Pooch brought up Jensen saying that Bolivia was his fault – which Clay also wanted an explanation for – so Jensen had shut up and started packing.)

By the RV was the van, the other piece of transportation they’d chosen since it had a larger storage space as well as extra seats and didn’t look threatening at all. Both RV and the van’s license plates had been skillfully switched out with other, similar makes and models twice. Jensen unlocked the van to reveal most of the boxes and shit that Pooch had packed up from their house in Springfield. Thankfully, Jensen had noticed (when checking to see the safest time to pick up Jolene, Emily, and Raina) that Jolene had been scheduled to induce labor tonight once her shift had ended, because it was dangerously into her tenth month and Jolene’s doctor had been concerned. Booking it here had been a nightmare, considering that Springfield, Massachusetts was on the opposite side of the country and flying at this time wasn’t exactly available to any of them.

It was almost ten in the morning when the doctors finally agreed to let Jolene leave – just over twelve hours of in-hospital time altogether and, as the doctors pointed out over and over, not the recommended course of action. If any complications developed with the baby, if anything happened to the mother, the mother must be tired, Pooch couldn’t just walk in there, declare himself the father, and then take the mother and child like that – and Pooch came out of the doors with a wide smile on his face, Jolene sitting in a wheelchair with a bundle of blankets cradled in her lap.

She saw them standing there, by the RV and the van, and confusion trailed over her face. Turning to Pooch, she murmured something, and his enthusiasm dimmed. Leaning down to press his cheek against hers, he simply held her for a moment.

When he got back up and finished pushing Jolene over to the RV, she looked at the three men disapprovingly. “Not even a phone call? A text? A goddamn email or picture?”

“You got flowers,” Jensen started, and Cougar elbowed him hard enough in the gut to make him double over.

Funnily enough, it was that that made Jolene’s eyes fill, and Clay could feel the familiar panic start to take over. He didn’t know what to _do_ with women who cried, didn’t know how to take care of them, but Jolene married Pooch, which meant Pooch could deal with it. And Pooch was – squatting by the wheelchair, taking her free hand in his, running his other hand over her face. “Hey, it’s okay. Jensen’s got a place, its safe, and you don’t know how much you’re being watched because of what happened in Bolivia. I told you, some really bad things that I can’t discuss in public. I’ve got everything from the house, I have all the baby manuals, Granny has a package that we left on her porch so she knows you’re safe and I’m alive, and we just gotta get to Emily and Raina, okay?”

Jolene seemed to notice Aisha then, and her eyes narrowed. “Who’s that?” she asked.

“Ah – Jolene, this is Aisha al-Fadhil. Aisha, this is Jolene Porteous,” Jensen offered, stepping to the side so the line between Jolene and Aisha was unobstructed.

They stared at each other for a long moment before Jolene snorted. “That kind of trouble, was it?”

***

Littleton, New Hampshire wasn’t that far away, relatively speaking, but it was far enough. Jolene and Pooch alternated between hot and cold – at least, on Jolene’s part. Pooch, for his part, was trying to do everything he could think of to make up for their extended, almost six-month, absence. The baby, little James Linwood Porteous, had a good set of lungs and proved it every fifteen minutes, it seemed. Clay was beginning to wish that he was in the van with Cougar and Aisha. Jensen didn’t seem to notice the noise, but then again, he’d gone through this with Raina. Clay had ex-wives, sure, but no kids – mostly because he’d never wanted any. He was slowly going mad.

He’d had time to get the bare-bones explanation for why, in the tiny trailer hitched to the back of the RV, Jensen had brought along the giant Easter egg – as proof, and because leaving it there meant some idiot might accidentally set it off, and because it wasn’t a bomb but a highly advanced dispersion unit designed to let out a cloud approximately one mile in diameter of concentrated gas filled with the very formula that had started this whole shit-fest. Jensen wanted to take the formula out, but was afraid of setting it off himself, and beyond that he wanted to get a contact of his to develop an antidote.

That didn’t make Clay feel any safer about towing it behind him.

About three hours later, they pulled into Littleton and parked the RV. Jensen was hopping up and down, unable to control himself, and Clay was about ready to just knock Jensen out and collect Emily and Raina and get the hell out of New Hampshire and into Canada, where Max should (theoretically) have a small hold and where an alias of Jensen’s owned a river house on the Bassin de Chambly, by the Rapides de Chambly. When his irritation become extremely obvious, Cougar moved over to his side and motioned at Jensen’s pink shirt.

“Championship game,” Cougar murmured. “Today’s Sunday.”

Ah, shit.

“Do you think we could pack up everything? Get Emily and Raina ready to leave right after the game?” Clay asked Cougar.

Cougar hitched one shoulder.

Going over to Jensen, Clay poked him in the chest. “Look, we can’t stay long.”

“It’s the _championship_ game, colonel!” Jensen protested, but Clay cut him off with a hand-wave.

“I get it. But can we get everything ready to go so that right after, we’re gone? Staying too long will only give Max more time to find them and us.”

Jensen gnawed on his lip. “You know how Emily will be when she finds out we’re alive. Do you wanna know what she’ll be like when we tell her we’re gonna be taking her away from her favorite donut shop?”

***

Clay, Aisha, and the rest of the Losers minus Jensen stood outside the yellow house and listened to the crashes inside.

“You didn’t _write_ , you didn’t _call_ , you made Raina _cry herself to sleep every night, FUCK YOU JACOB ANDREW JENSEN!_ ”

“You don’t know how glad I am that you’re more levelheaded than Emily,” Pooch murmured to Jolene, who was sitting in the porch swing. She had insisted that she could walk from the RV to the porch, even though Pooch had repeatedly offered to carry her there, as had Cougar, Jensen, and Clay.

Jolene smiled up at Pooch, James nursing at her breast. “Oh, honey, if I can pass James off to Emily, you’ll get the same, don’t you worry.”

Pooch visibly paled.

“But Emmy—”

_“DON’T YOU EMMY ME, YOU LITTLE BASTARD!”_

There was a pause, and then sobbing. Clay and Pooch were uncomfortable with the sound of crying, Pooch clutching tight at Jolene’s hand, and she seemed inclined enough to his touch that she let him and even rubbed her fingers over the back of his hand.

Jensen’s voice was muffled, now, but no less freaked out, even as Emily continued to cry, great heaving sounds of pain that tore at Clay and he had to look away.

“Anything, _anything_ you could have done—”

“They watched you guys more closely than Jolene,” Clay could hear Jensen say, and his voice wasn’t all that steady either. “They know what I can do with a computer; they weren’t looking that close at Jolene. I could only – only send your workplace stuff, or Raina’s class as a whole. I couldn’t single you out or they’d know and they’d kill us for sure.”

“Why are you here, then?”

***

In the end, Emily had acquiesced and gotten the bare essentials they needed packed up and put in the van, RV, and covered trailer. Raina was apparently at morning practice before the game, and Emily didn’t want Raina to know that Jensen was back in case that messed up her game, though Raina would know soon enough.

She kept randomly throwing knives at Jensen, which Jensen would catch expertly (which explained his aim, god _damn_ that woman was volatile, and while Clay had heard legends and stories about Emily Arianna Jensen he had no idea that she was a petite woman with blond short, spiked hair, snapping green eyes, and a mouth that was dirtier than Jensen’s). Apparently, their brains moved at each other’s speed, too, and she was extremely blunt, because mid-way through packing she dragged Jensen into the kitchen and asked point-blank, “Why are you moving differently? It’s almost inhuman.”

Jensen gave her a pained smile. “Can we have that talk when we’re in Canada, please? I swear, everything will be explained, we just – it’s a long, long story.”

His voice was weary, shoulders slumped, and Emily looked at him a long moment before nodding. “We’re almost done, and the game’s in half an hour.”

Aisha, who’d been with Clay, furrowed her brow at Clay and said slowly, “His sister is… human.”

“Yes?” Clay asked, because what else could she – okay, stupid question, _obviously_ there were things out there, but Aisha was still being close-mouthed about everything, just like Jensen.

“He was… born human?”

“Ye-es?” Clay repeated, drawing the word out.

Frowning, she turned back to packing up the scrapbooks and looked thoughtful the rest of the time.

Emily insisted that they take her SUV – _“Do you really think two families’ worth of stuff will fit into an RV and a van? No, I don’t care that the house is furnished and can support three families if it had too, we’ll need cars and I’m not driving that piece of shit van, Jacob Jensen, and don’t you expect me to,”_ – and they all drove to the field, sitting in the stands and watching these tiny girls in pink go up against… were the girls in yellow _really_ eight-year-olds?

Jensen, predictably, was over-excited and over-enthusiastic, yelling and cheering, making the entire bench seat shift as he fidgeted. Clay did his best to ignore him, scanning the field and trying to take in anything that might be out of place. Though – what the hell would count as ‘out of place’? It wasn’t as if he’d been around enough kiddie soccer games to know what was normal and what wasn’t.

“You wanna jump on this one for me, colonel?”

Clay blinked and looked down at the newborn’s scrunched face, and the absolutely _horrendous_ scent that rose up from the blankets. “I’d rather jump on a live grenade,” he said point-blank.

It was mere seconds later that Jensen’s niece – _“Number 21, yeah, that’s her, star of the team, amazing, isn’t she? I know, I know!”_ – was knocked over and Clay winced. The fall hadn’t been that terrible, though, and the girl sat up, more annoyed than anything, brushing dirt off her knees.

“How’re we gonna get the Easter egg through customs?”

Clay turned to look at Aisha, not quite sure what to say, when Cougar poked at him. “Boss,” he said, voice urgent, and Clay turned to see Jensen on the field and Raina shrieking in glee, jumping up to hug him even as the ref came and started shouting at him. Jensen was shouting back, and the ref was pushing him back.

“Better—” Pooch began.

“Yeah, we should,” Aisha said, and the team got up and got down to the field as quickly as they could, Clay looking around for Emily because surely she could hold her brother in check, right?

Cougar got between them, putting his hands up and making calming motions, as Aisha reassured Raina that her uncle was just going to go sit in the stands again. Clay and Pooch took Jensen, manhandling him back, Pooch grumbling about donkeys and idiots.

“Loser!” the ref shouted as a final parting shot, and Jensen whipped around, making all three men grab at him to keep him back.

It was a shot of normality, domesticity, that made Clay take a deep breath in and smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~Also, I may or may not have been influenced by Andrew Scott's portrayal of Moriarty when writing Max. Oops.~~


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here is a massive chapter. With a lot of information. I have around four or five pieces of scratch paper with notes and random lines connecting one note to another and I TRIED TO KEEP TRACK OKAY? ;_;
> 
> If something is confusing, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I was trying to make it simple (after all, Clay's gonna need things broken down for him because he's not all that happy with the supernatural). I was also trying to figure out where I wanted this to go. I don't know how to write Pooch non-canon, okay? He was very difficult. 
> 
> Downside of a massive chapter? I only have 25k words written beyond this. I am at 132.5k, hopefully 133k by tonight, but I'm looking to try and wrap it all up as soon as I can because I need it done by November. Again, if anything's confusing from Jake's perspective, please let me know?
> 
>  
> 
> oh yeah. and sex. completely forgot that was there. sex.

Jake had bought this house under one of his many aliases. Each one was for a separate part of his work, and he had already had two solid backgrounds complete with social security numbers and employment records and drivers licenses by the time he’d entered Basic. Being in the army had only introduced him to black ops and more aliases, and better skills at building up what was needed to make a believable persona. The property in Canada had been bought under his strongest, safest alias, set on Rue Lafontaine, and he had intended it to be a surprise for Emily when he’d retired from the army. It was a big house, with three large bedrooms upstairs and two bathrooms, and another bedroom with a study and bathroom attached downstairs. It was meant to be… well, okay, he had bought it intending to bring Cougar back to it, and he’d envisioned turning one of the upstairs bedrooms into a game room for Raina and setting the loft up as his computer central-slash-man cave. The downstairs bedroom was going to be his and Cougar’s, and the study would be for Cougar’s books because he knew Cougar liked books even though Cougar never outright told him so.

There was also a huge dining room and living room, along with an entertainment room, spacious garage, and a backyard that entered into a small forested area. Pool, too, and this had cost a pretty penny – but at the time, he’d just completed a mission that had allowed him to lift quite a bit of data from terrorists and, well, another missing million wouldn’t have done any damage anyway.

It was only two and a half hours away, though it turned into a four-hour drive because of customs. Jake had Canadian citizenship as well as documentation proving himself to be a mechanical engineer which he used to explain the Easter egg, which smoothed things along (both Clay and Emily had looked surprised to learn that. He’d have to give her [and Clay] a thorough explanation later).

All in all, it was nearing sunset when they finally got there, parking the RV in the drive and the van and SUV in the garage. Then came the unpacking, with Jolene and Pooch taking the downstairs bedroom, Clay and Aisha taking the bedroom farthest from the room that Raina and Emily were sharing, and Cougar and Jensen in the middle between them. Everything was taken out of the car by two in the morning – Jolene had already taken James and retired to the room, and Raina had sacked out on the couch, seeing the whole thing as a glorious adventure and steadfastly refusing to leave Jake’s side (broke his heart a _lot_ , and he resolved to make it up to her _big-time_ ).

“Alright,” Clay finally said. “You have a security system set up, Jensen?”

“Stupid question, sir,” he said tiredly, sitting down on the couch next to Raina and absently running a hand over her hair.

Clay nodded, smiling crookedly. “Okay. Tomorrow, we get papers for everyone, get everything ready for Raina to go to school here, and you and Aisha will _explain yourselves_. Am I clear?”

“Looking forward to it, sir,” Jake muttered.

Cougar nudged him, even as Clay repeated, “Am I clear?” – echoed by Emily’s glare.

Jake swallowed and sighed. “Clear as crystal, colonel.”

***

Jake sprawled out in the bed, staring up at the dark ceiling and listening to the soft breaths of Cougar lying next to him in the bed. This bedroom was the one set in the back of the house, the windows overlooking the spacious backyard and pool. There was a bathroom and a storage closet between the bedroom they were in and the bedroom Clay and Aisha were occupying. He was whole-heartedly glad that either Clay and Aisha were too tired to get up to anything tonight or they were being considerately quiet about it.

Okay, that wasn’t what he was thinking about, it really wasn’t. He was thinking about everything he had to unload off his chest. Everything he should have told Clay, everything that he’d kept hidden, all the extra searches and inquiries into the underground – _everything_ that he should never have hidden.

Cougar had told him it was okay, though. Had pointed out that it wouldn’t help the team to know about it while they were still working, wouldn’t even really help them now. He’d implied, to the side while helping Jake pack up the essentials from Pooch’s house, that if Jake continued to hide it Cougar would support him in it. That it wasn’t their business whether Max had come after them because of Jake or Clay.

But Jake felt guilty. Everyone – and he meant _everyone,_ look at Roque who was always so solidly on Clay’s side – blamed Clay and it hurt Clay a lot, wore him thin and drove him to Aisha in a way that he had never turned to a woman before. If Jake explained everything, _everything_ , let them know all his suspicions, everything he thought Max was behind, everything about _Aisha_ he suspected… things might get better for the team. Not Jake, of course – Jake would be lucky if Pooch didn’t rip off his head or Clay shoot him in front of Emily.

Aw, shit, Emily would hear of it somehow. Emily refused to not know about everything that was occurring in her life, and since they kinda kidnapped her and brought her to Canada (her new identity, with Raina’s and Jolene’s and James’ and all the Losers, was on its way to this address marking them citizens of Canada and giving them whole backstories to their move) she would _definitely_ want to know about this. What would she think, to know the cover story the US had concocted was pretty much on spot, except it wasn’t the _team’s_ fault but _Jake’s_?

“You are thinking too loudly, _mi amado_.”

Jake nearly jumped out of the bed, he was so startled. “ _Je_ -sus Christ, Cougs, what the hell?” he gasped, putting a hand over his chest where his heart thumped painfully fast.

Cougar had been on sleeping facedown before, one arm curled under his head and the other one up by his face, hand half-closed and black hair splayed out over the pillow. Now, he was propped up on one arm, the other one pulling strands of hair out of his face, eyes half-closed and still sleepy. Jake shoved his thoughts down to the back of his mind and smiled up at Cougar. “Sorry, did I wake you up or something?”

“ _Si_ ,” Cougar murmured, reaching out to trace his fingers over Jake’s chest – they were both shirtless, though Cougar was sleeping in boxers and Jake in sweats. “You weren’t asleep.”

“But I wasn’t moving or anything!” Jake protested. “I mean, I wasn’t even typing or talking or—”

Cougar huffed out a fond sigh and crawled over the small space between them to straddle Jake’s lower abdomen, hands helping him balance by pressing against Jake’s shoulders. “If you were doing those, you would not be lying stiff like a board next to me, letting me know something is on your mind,” Cougar pointed out, fingers kneading the knotted muscles around Jake’s neck. Jake would argue that Cougar’s explanation really wasn’t a good explanation at all, except his neck was a particularly sensitive place and at the moment his eyes were half-lidded and he was trying not to moan too loudly as Cougar’s strong, gun-callused fingers ran over his neck and shoulders.

Lowering his head to let his beard tickle over Jake’s cheek, Cougar murmured, “Everything will be fine, _mi amado_. They will not touch you. They will not harm you.”

“You can’t know that,” Jake whispered back, voice choked from both emotion and the fact that Cougar had scooted down his body so that his ass was pressed against Jake’s groin. Cougar ground his ass against Jake’s stirring cock and Jake started to say, “Distracting me with sex—”

“—works very well, _burro_ ,” Cougar smoothly interjected, mouthing at Jake’s pecs as he continued to knead Jake’s shoulders. “Helps you sleep. Lets you think, instead of this, instead of winding yourself up and worrying incessantly.”

“Yeah, but—” Jake began, and then Cougar bit at his nipple and Jake let out a muffled groan, one hand sliding up Cougar’s spine to rest against the back of Cougar’s neck and the other going to his own mouth, his teeth biting into the ball of his hand in order to keep himself from making enough noise to bother the other occupants of the house.

Cougar chuckled, because Cougar was evil like that, and mouthed open-mouthed kisses down Jake’s sternum until he reached Jake’s navel. There, he paused, because okay, yeah, Jake was making more noise than he probably should, high-pitched whines and whimpers. Shaking his head, Cougar kneeled up.

“No, no, Cougs, Carlos, please don’t, I’ll – I’ll be quiet, I swear—”

There was fondness in Cougar’s eyes as he shook his head again. “No, you won’t.”

Swallowing roughly, Jake looked up at Cougar with pleading eyes. “I’ll try really hard, really, it’s not fair to be a cocktease, of course you’re always a cocktease so how is that different—”

Snickering, Cougar poked at Jake’s side, rolled Jake onto his stomach and Jake automatically pulled his knees to his chest, pressing his mouth into the pillows. Cougar didn’t have to worry about making noise, of course – the only time Jake had gotten Cougar to shout and moan and generally make as much noise as a _normal_ person in bed was when Jake had handcuffed Cougar to the bed and proceeded to eat out his ass very, very, thoroughly – but Jake—

“Oh god, yes, yes, Cougs, Carlos please I want it I want you please—”

—Jake, however, went silent at only one point—

There was the soft rip of a condom packet, lube hastily applied, and then Cougar was pressing into Jake, and Jake was panting, gasping, unable to form words, unable to think because there was a meteor shower going off behind his eyelids, lines of code running like explosions of ecstasy and he couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel anything beyond the stretch and the invasion and the delicious, delicious friction as Cougar leaned over his back, Cougar’s slighter weight pressing down on him and pinning him here, making him _present_ , keeping his thoughts from scattering like dragonflies and instead focused on the thick cock in his ass and the burn of stubble on the back of his neck.

—and that one point was when he was getting pounded.

Cougar stayed impossibly still for one moment, letting Jake adjust maybe, and Jake started to twitch and fidget for no more than two or three seconds before one of Cougar’s hands came up to press on the back of Jake’s neck, and the other went to clasp at his hips. “ _Mi amado_ ,” Cougar whispered in Jake’s ear, and then he was _slamming_ into Jake and Jake could do nothing more than whine and mewl, no words, no loud groans or cries or exclamations, just the feeling of being possessed and owned and _Cougar’s_ and he rocked his hips back to meet Cougar, dug fingers into the sheets and whimpered into the pillows, loving the press of Cougar’s weight above him, in him, fucking _around_ him and Cougar was setting a punishing rate, slamming and letting out that low, sub-vocal growl that he always did when he was feeling protective and Jake couldn’t take it, couldn’t fucking _take it_ anymore and he writhed, quivering, and his climax overtook him in a rush of heat and burst of light that blinded him.

Dimly, he was aware that Cougar was growling over him, hips stuttering, but he was boneless, too weak to do more than lift his hips and let Cougar slam in once, twice, three more times and then Cougar was coming, head bowed low over Jake’s back and teeth fastened in the meat of Jake’s bicep.

He must have passed out, because after that it was just darkness.

***

Jake wasn’t surprised that Cougar had gotten up before him – if Jake had the chance, he’d sleep in pretty much until noon, and while being in the army and special forces had trained him to wake up at the drop of the hat it didn’t change his preferred sleeping habits. As it was, the scent of pancakes drifted through the house along hot coffee that had Jake muttering and throwing his hand out to grope blindly for a body that was no longer in bed. A few minutes later he heaved a sigh of defeat and pushed himself up to a sitting position, feeling the sore ache in his ass because really, they hadn’t prepared adequately last night and one of these times Jake was going to take the time to make Cougar loose and slick and easy before rushing to the finale.

Then everything that had happened, that had run through his mind last night, seemed to crash down on him like an anvil; finally in a safe place, he could stop and _process_ what was going on instead of running from one base to another to track down Max and then run from one end of the country to another to gather up their families and get them somewhere safe.

He stumbled out of the room and made his way to the shared bathroom, opening the door only to shriek and slam it shut.

“ _You’re going to be missing an ear, Jensen!_ ”

“Sorry, sorry!” he called out, just as Emily came around the corner and he nearly slammed his sister into the wall. “Sorry!”

She eyed him suspiciously. “How long has it been since you’ve had a full night’s sleep?”

“Since I was twelve years old,” Jake responded promptly, even as he tried to force his eyes all the way open.

“You’ve got some bad hickeys there. And you’re missing your glasses.”

Jake focused on the last half of that, because no way in hell was he going to explain his sex life to his older sister. “I am?” Huh. Maybe his eyes _were_ open and the missing glasses would explain why everything was blurry. Wandering back to the room, he stood in front of the bed and stared.

Strong brown hands circled around his wrists and tugged him to sit on the bed. “ _Amado_ ,” Cougar breathed, “you are still tired.”

“Promised I’d explain everything,” Jake murmured as Cougar slid the glasses onto Jake’s face. “Have to tell them – everything.”

There was silence for a moment, Cougar’s hands resting on Jake’s shoulders, and then a light kiss pressed to Jake’s forehead. “If you do not want to—”

“I need to. They – deserve everything,” Jake muttered. “Shit, I haven’t screwed up so badly since I was eleven. Maybe not even then; blowing up a wing of the school when its empty doesn’t hit the same level, does it?”

Cougar ruffled Jake’s hair and tugged Jake back to a standing position. For a moment, Cougar just squinted at Jake, looking him up and down, before sighing. “So tired you’ll answer all questions. I do not like this, _mi amado_.”

“You can’t protect me forever, Cougs,” Jake whispered back, before shaking his head and mustering up a smile. “But we’re safe, everyone’s safe, and Roque’s – okay, well, it’s not good he’s gone but Aisha hasn’t killed us in our sleep or sold us to the highest bidder, so we’ll come out of it mostly okay, yeah? Mostly. Somewhat. And if it comes down to it, I could leave. Or let Clay punch me out.”

Cougar growled, which Jake found comforting.

“Let’s go face the music.”

***

“You said I had two members who were part of the otherworld,” Clay stated.

It was late morning, everyone except Raina (who had gone nuts when she saw the pool and begged to go out and play in it, and Emily had let her) sitting around the living room with cups of coffee in various states of emptiness. Jolene and Emily were there as well, though their presence had been vigorously argued against by Aisha and Pooch and Clay; Aisha because she didn’t know them or trust them, Pooch and Clay because Jolene and Emily were civilians and didn’t need to be dragged into this mess. Jake kinda felt the same way, but he knew that all Emily needed to do was corner Jake and in moments he’d be spilling all his secrets to her, so in the end maybe it didn’t matter.

Cougar was silent on the matter, but since that was his trademark no one bothered him. Unlike Jake, who’d been called on multiple times by Emily to defend her right to be present.

Aisha glowered sullenly at the other two women from her position by the fireplace. Emily simply smiled back with an edge that Jake knew from years under the guardianship of his sister, holding her coffee cup almost primly in her lap next to Pooch and Jolene, who also shared the couch. Pooch looked nervous to be between the two women, and Jolene was breast-feeding the baby and, visibly at least, ignoring Aisha completely.

“Aisha,” Clay prompted. “If you want to go, you can – I’m not going to stop you – but if we’re working together we need to figure out what exactly we’re facing. You said that Max was trying to buy next generation weapons, and that when he gets involved world maps change.”

Still glaring, Aisha nodded. “Max is one of the otherworld.”

“What is this otherworld?” Pooch asked.

Aisha turned to look over at Jake and Cougar, who were sharing an armchair – or, rather, Jake was sprawled in the armchair and Cougar was perched on the arm – and jerked her chin at them. “The otherworld is the world full of the supernatural creatures that are, for the most part, unknown to normal humans. There are myths, of course, but most myths are false or misleading.”

“We’re not supernatural creatures, though,” Jake said suddenly.

Aisha frowned. “Yes, I’ve realized you aren’t, but Cougar is.”

Cougar shook his head negatively.

“You must be,” Aisha insisted, though now a puzzled look was coming across her face. “With your level of control and ability to manifest your other senses in your human body—”

“They’re a product of a formula that allows them to transform into a shape that is most comfortable for them. The army designed it in order to combat the werewolf soldiers for hire that started appearing in Europe about a decade or so ago,” Clay interrupted.

“Werewolf? I’m sorry, what are we talking about?”

Jake bit his lip, tilting his head a little to look at Emily around Pooch and Jolene. “Er. Well. Myths aren’t so mythological anymore?”

“I’ll lay our cards on the table first,” Clay said gruffly, leaning forward on the wooden chair he’d positioned opposite Cougar and Jake. “About a decade or so ago, a formula with some fancy letters and numbers forced men to transform into wolves.”

“Really.” Jolene’s voice couldn’t sound any dryer and Clay rubbed the back of his head awkwardly and made a face.

“It sounds ridiculous, I know, and our guys dismissed it out of hand at first. But apparently there were enough scientists in our R&D divisions doing something similar to grafting animal DNA to human test subjects that some people took it seriously. And when one of our special ops teams was torn to bits by an unnaturally large wolf, well… skeptics remained but it was a chance for something bigger, newer. I wasn’t even a colonel, then – I was lieutenant colonel, with a different team. Not as specialized. By the time I reached colonel, and headed a unit mostly made up of ‘losers’ the army would have otherwise bobtailed, they’d already brought in Wade as an example of a ‘pre-wave Procedural soldier’ and a formula that could transform soldiers into animals that matched their personalities.”

“That should have been impossible,” Aisha interjected. “Shape-shifters are born, not created, and the animal choose the shifter, the shifter doesn’t choose the animal. Or animals.”

Jake couldn’t decide whether to touch the aspect of ‘animal chooses the person’ or the plural of animals, and so just tilted his head at her. “Shape-shifters?”

“One of the races in the otherworld, along with werewolves. Only, werewolves don’t go into military service, or any type of service that puts them near humans; it’s impossible for them to work well with humans. Humans, for the most part, register as prey on the otherworld’s scale. Shape-shifters are more easygoing.”

There was silence for a moment before Clay cleared his throat. “Right. Well. It worked, obviously.”

“Obviously?” Emily asked, eyes narrowed as her head whipped around to pin Jake down.

Jake licked his lips. “Yeah, I mean… I can transform into an animal. And Cougar can transform into an animal, too. The both of us. Can turn. I mean. Colonel?”

Thankfully, Clay took pity on Jake’s inability to meet his sister’s gaze. “As Aisha pointed out, both Jensen and Cougar have good control in their other forms.”

“I said _Cougar_ had good control,” Aisha corrected deftly.

There was another long pause before Clay continued, “Both of them were part of the Procedure that turned them into shape-shifters. Jensen was – an anomaly. The formula was designed to create predators because the brass really didn’t want to waste money on something that wouldn’t look like a powerhouse, something that looked good on paper and made for fierce soldiers. The formula was also designed to bring up aggressive instincts, make the soldier more bestial and violent in human form. No Procedural soldier’s ever supposed to get captures ‘cause they’ll go down fighting first. They don’t like being caged, or small spaces. Cougar’s one of the best damn Procedural soldiers out there, and Jensen’s control is pretty good for an herbivore.”

Emily turned back to look at Clay. “I thought you said it was supposed to create predators. Was that the anomaly? What happened? And why the _fuck_ doesn’t the public know where their tax dollars are going? This is – human experimentation is too tame a word for it, it really is. This is B-class-movie shit.”

For a moment, Clay actually seemed to consider answering the rapid-fire questions, but Jake could tell the moment he gave up. Emily might not be as fast as Jake himself was, but she was sharper than most people and a damn sight more assertive and domineering. Aisha looked like she was ready to either smile at Emily or punch her lights out. Jolene was simply shaking her head slowly, as if unable to believe what was going on.

Cougar leaned down a bit, brushing his forearm against Jake’s shoulder comfortingly, as Clay sighed. “Since I had two formulaic soldiers on my team, it made sense that the brass would send me and my team out to track and take out the really weird shit. We’ve seen some of those werewolves, though I have to say they look nothing like that wolf at the port. Sometimes, though, we’re supposed to bring back something that’s fallen in the wrong hands. This one time, it was a formula. Fuck… it was that _goddamned_ formula that started everything. We were told to bring it back, so our scientists could experiment with it, but hell if I was going to do that. The first sign that something bad was up was Jensen getting solitary. Then our missions got progressively harder, bad intel, patchy support. Finally, there was that mission in Bolivia, the one on the televisions. Couldn’t do shit after that. Maybe seeing that formula but destroying it instead of following orders had been some kind of test that we failed… I don’t know.”

Jake shifted uneasily, wanting to speak up, get it off his chest, and _not_ wanting to do that just as much. Could he say that, now, in front of everyone, that it was his fault the missions had gotten worse? That he’d kept looking into the formula and that was why they’d been going on harder and harder missions? That they’d been sent to clean up Fadhil because Fadhil was backing and scheduled to distribute that formula for whoever had created it?

A hand on his shoulder made him look up to see Cougar’s steady eyes on him. He let out a long, low breath before steeling himself. He’d already told Cougar, and Cougar hadn’t left him. Hadn’t told on him. Even if his team turned on him, well… he’d have Cougar.

“I—” he started, and stopped, fingers tapping nervously against his thigh, not looking up from the carpet. “I may have. Um. C-continued to hack and r-research that formula.” He swallowed hard, trying not to notice just how _loud_ the silence was, and said in a much quieter voice, “And. That may or m-may not have c-contributed to the Bolivia. Situation. Thing. Deaths.”

There was still uninterrupted silence, and Jake was growing more and more antsy in his seat. After a few moments, Clay said slowly, “I’m not sure I follow, Jensen. You – continued to research that formula?”

“Yeah,” he said softly.

“What kind of dumbass move was that?!” Pooch snarled suddenly, and Jake fought not to flinch at all. “Shit, man, you were put in solitary for that crap and so you go and do it again? What made you think it was a fucking good idea?!”

Jake didn’t say a word, and then there was a heavy sigh from Clay that cut Jake to the bone. “How do you know this contributed to the… situation in Bolivia?” he asked.

Hitching a shoulder, keeping his head down, Jake replied, “Some of Fadhil’s money went to funding the formula. And, looking at the descriptions and shit… he was supposed to be a distributor of it, too. Someone who’d – test it.”

Of course, he’d forgotten that they actually had Fadhil’s _kid_ with them.

“That’s a _lie_ ,” Aisha snarled, moving halfway across the room with a knife in her hand before Cougar was standing himself between her and Jake, lips curled back in a bestial snarl and skin rippling.

“It’s not, Aisha. I checked and double-checked and shit, pretty much the entire time I’ve been in the US and can log into the underground chat sites without bouncing around trying to locate one, I’ve been looking into where Fadhil’s money disappeared. How do you think I found _you_? Watching your dad’s money was pretty much the _only_ link I had to figure out what shit I’d managed to land us in.” Jake kept his voice studiously neutral, making sure it didn’t waver or tremble or croak no matter how much it wanted to.

“So if you’d backed off of this research,” Pooch said, voice low and dangerous and now Jake really couldn’t keep from flinching a little, “we wouldn’t have been stranded there? We wouldn’t have been burned and Jolene wouldn’t have been alone?”

Cougar took a step back, placing his body squarely between Jake and the rest of the room so Jake couldn’t see anything but worn jeans and the hem of Cougar’s cotton t-shirt. “Not true,” he said, voice rough with his cougar. “Contribute? Perhaps. But everything we did, every reaction we had, it showed them where we would fall.” Turning slightly – not that Jake was looking up, because he was _not,_ thank you very much, not until he’d gotten what he deserved – Cougar’s hand rested against the top of his head. “What did the formula do, _mi amado_?”

Swallowing hard, Jake hitched one shoulder. “Not exactly an appropriate time to discuss that, Cougs,” he responded, voice low.

“Fuck, if I risked my son and my wife because this formula was so fucking horrible, I want to know what the hell it was!” Pooch snarled, vicious and mean.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Emily began, and she sounded both pissed and concerned, which was pretty much her state around Jake all the time, really, he should have remembered that, “Jake researched the formula that made him – whatever he is—”

Jake flinched, and Cougar – who was still between him and the rest of the room, hand resting lightly against the top of Jake’s head – rubbed two fingertips against Jake’s temple.

“—and that put him in solitary? Why?”

Clay heaved a sigh. “No, this… the first time I realized something might be up, that there might be something more in the labs and in the experimental process beyond our Procedural soldiers was a mission we were sent on to retrieve a chemical compound from a terrorist group. It was – sickening, to say the very least. I made the call to burn the place to the ground and report the compound as lost, instead of following orders and bringing the compound in. Jensen told me that it looked as if it came from American scientists; got put into solitary, we assume, because he poked deeper into it and its creators than he was supposed to. I thought that was the end of it. I certainly didn’t know he’d been looking more into it than that.”

“I want to know what the fuck it was, Jensen, that made you think it was okay to risk all of our lives like that! For such a genius you’re sure a fucking idiot asshole that—”

Cougar snarled, low in his throat, and there was a small noise of a slap and then Jolene saying firmly, “Right, well, let’s give Jake a chance to explain himself _without_ anyone jumping down his throat, and then we’ll figure it out from there. Go on, Jake, sweetie, help us out here.”

Jake didn’t move, didn’t breathe, just leaned his forehead against the small of Cougar’s back, silently apologizing for making Cougar twist his hand to keep it against Jake’s head, and tried to marshal his thoughts into a logical, coherent flow.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning, like you did with me, _mi amado_?” Cougar murmured, voice too low to be picked up by human ears. Jake twitched and licked his lips nervously, but the silence dragged on and Cougar remained between him and the rest of the room, rubbing his fingers against Jake’s head and waiting patiently.

It didn’t look like he’d be given any other options out of this, and he had fucking started this by speaking up, so he was going to have to finish it. Swallowing, he closed his eyes tight and muttered, “Guess – guess Clay’s told his part, so it’s my turn? Then Aisha? Because I’m not saying shit if we don’t get to gang up on her like this.”

A soft swish of air was all he heard in response from Aisha herself, but Jolene replied gently, “No one’s going to gang up on you here, Jake. Right, Linwood?”

The silence dragged on another few minutes before Pooch snorted. “Not right now,” he agreed, voice rough, and Jake could imagine him with his arms crossed and that scowl on his face that made bad guys wet their pants more than once.

Cougar’s body was vibrating, a soft, deep purr that reassured Jake even with Pooch’s words, or Clay’s disapproving silence – or Emily’s disbelieving _and_ disapproving silence. Trying to keep from hyperventilating, he began softly, “Well, the formula was – pretty fucking bad. I would say it was only possible in movies or B-rated horror films but – but then again, what Cougar and I can do is only possible in those places, too. But.” He cleared his throat, leaned a little harder against Cougar’s back. “Um. It, uh, sped up the metabolism for people. Like. Like those pills for weight loss, that help people drop weight? Only this was – this was that on steroids. Their – their victims would be injected with this and it would, would just… make them _hungry_. They would be sweating off fat and their metabolism would make them shit and piss out everything before nutrients could really get into their bodies. So. They would. Um. Be hungry all the time. And. Eat anything that came near. And things that were just… _there_. Like their – their refuse. Like their – their own fingers. Like – anything. _Anything_. It was just – it was supposed to be a way to wipe out a, a remote village. Long-range tactics. ‘We know the bad guys are in that cave system, so we’re going to d-dose up this random citizen and sedate them and then let them loose and sooner or later we’ll go in with napalm and burn whatever’s left out.’ Because – shit, it wasn’t just metabolism that was fast it was – it was regeneration, too. Healing. Things couldn’t be killed unless decapitated. Severing the spine. Burning. So. So we were told to bring this – this formula back. And I couldn’t do it. I – I wiped everything I could, from all servers I could access, before telling Clay I wouldn’t do it, so even if Clay ordered me to do it… it would be impossible. And Clay told me to burn the place down, so I did. And there were test subjects still inside and they could still _speak_ and… but I did.”

There was a silence, and Jake didn’t do well with silences so he barreled on, “And, well, I was okay in solitary, I mean, it wasn’t great and my horse didn’t like it and it was really weird to only hear my voice and nothing else for that long, but it was okay, I could handle it, but then they let me out and sat me in a room and told me to wait for – for me to sit until my CO came for me. And so I did, and there was a camera which meant the warden was watching, and then the door opened and this guy comes in with this creepy-ass scar on his neck and he just sits down and begins asking me questions about my schooling, why I didn’t finish my masters or anything, why I didn’t go on to a higher rank, and I was just – I thought it was just someone who was doing a review of me or something, so I answered the questions, but they became – really, really specific. Like, ‘how’s my niece doing and congratulations on my sister’s new job’ specific. And he started referencing the formula in this slanted way, like – not directly, but he’d mention about how difficult it was to make weight loss pills but if you’re willing to walk the line of legalities there’s a way to speed up metabolism, and wouldn’t it be a shame if such a thing was a contagion, not an injection, and I didn’t _know_ what to say and it got to a point where it was just name, rank, serial number running through my head over and over again. And then it was lunch time, I know it, ‘cause the warden came in and told us he was going on break and I looked at him and asked him if this guy sitting before me was a superior officer and he said no so I just left and – and this has _always_ been a problem with me, you know that, and he implied that maybe I shouldn’t sniff around the formula any more but how the hell did he know about it in the first place if my suspicions weren’t right in the first place?”

“So you kept on looking,” Clay rumbled.

Jake pressed his head harder against Cougar’s back, and Cougar pressed back against him. “So I kept looking. But – I swear it wasn’t like – wasn’t something I devoted a lot of time on. I mean – hell, we still had _missions_ and there were other things to do and then my hand got busted up and then I got Bryan to play boyfriend to test out my hypothesis in a controlled experiment and then, well, there was _sex_ and I swear I didn’t go looking deep, just tugging at threads every other week or so, when it pinged in the back of my mind. I _forgot_ about it a lot, tried to _put it_ out of my mind the rest of the time.”

“What makes you think it’s your fault, then?” Aisha asked, voice cool and unimpressed with Jake’s major freak out. Jake could say something like being due one, but he already felt horrible enough that he cleared his throat, trying to ignore the condemning silence from the others.

“Because – because why else would they send us to  Bolivia? To just light up a target? Not get close, not do an extraction, hell, not even do recon beyond confirming Fadhil’s presence? We’re – we’re better than that, used for missions that are bloody or dangerous or both. And Fadhil – Fadhil was one of the bigger contributors to the company manufacturing the formula. They – I know you don’t like the implication or whatever, that he was your dad, but his name was on it, in a lot of different capacities, and for all I know those kids were supposed to be carriers of it to test its effectiveness, how the fuck am I supposed to know? Why would they burn us for refusing to carry out orders when it’s happened before, _multiple_ times? It just… it makes more sense… that it’s because of what I was doing.”

There was a violent noise, something Jake couldn’t quite place without seeing but he was quite content to let Cougar continue to stand in front of him and just get all this out there, let them all know and then wait for the condemnation.

“You don’t keep shit like this from the team,” Clay finally said. “This was something big, something that—”

“Would knowing it have changed anything that has happened?” Cougar snarled, taking half a step forward, and Jake curled his fingers in the hem of Cougar’s shirt and breathed in deep. He was a grown-ass man and he needed to act like it. He knew the consequences of keeping this quiet and he knew how the team would react. Keeping his head down didn’t change anything and only made it look like he regretted his decision – and, okay, he _did_ , he hated keeping it a secret, it had eaten at him and he’d tried in multiple small ways to make up for the horrendous mistake he’d made, but Cougar had been right. There was nothing else he could have done at the moment. He had to believe that.

Taking a deep breath, he leaned back, lifting his head, and Cougar half-turned to look at him, a silent question in his eyes. There was nothing but acceptance there, nothing but gentleness, and it reassured Jake more than anything else. Even though it might – okay, no might about it, even though it had been a wimp thing to do, hide his face from the rest of the team and lean against not only someone _younger_ than him but someone who hadn’t made the mistakes that Jake had made – Cougar accepted the need and didn’t condemn him for it.

Jake nodded, and so Cougar took a small step to the side, letting Jake see the rest of the room but not removing himself between Jake and the other occupants. Clay looked – fuck, Clay looked so disappointed, and Emily had that familiar look on her face that Jake hated, the one that asked him how could he have possibly screwed up so badly, Jolene looked – actually, Jolene looked kinda sympathetic, which was awesome, but didn’t make up for the fact that Pooch wasn’t even in the room anymore. And Aisha, well… she looked pissed. Probably because of the father insinuation, but Jake really wasn’t going to touch her daddy issues with a ten foot pole if he could help it, so it didn’t matter.

Then – bless Jolene, just, she was perfect, so perfect, Pooch was a lucky, lucky man and wow, maybe Jake should, like, hack something for her, build a college fund for little James, something – then Jolene tilted her head to look at Cougar, turned her head to look at Clay, and said in a calm voice, “I still don’t understand the procedure you were talking about. Or that small reference to another world.”

The subject change was not one Clay wanted to go along with, but Emily shook her head and heaved a sigh. “Is this what you were talking about, at the house? You move differently and shit?”

“Cougar turns into his nickname, and Jensen can transform into a horse,” Clay said tiredly. “Though I have to wonder what you meant, Aisha, because they were both human and I didn’t know there was, really, another category they could have been. Max implied the same thing, saying something about ‘you humans’ and I have to say, he was a creepy-ass motherfucker, but I didn’t see him looking any differently than me. Except really pale.”

With a sigh, Aisha rubbed the back of her neck and stared up as if in frustration. “Did he say anything else?”

Clay shifted, confused and Jake couldn’t blame him. “Like what?”

“Like his plans, like why he decided to meddle in human affairs again, like everything _I_ knew to ask him except you stuck me with your stupid-ass sniper who didn’t know better to stay away from his sire!”

“See, I didn’t get half of that,” Emily said, glaring at Aisha. “What do you mean ‘meddle in human affairs again’? ‘Stay away from his sire’?”

Aisha looked at them, eyes narrowed. “I could get in trouble for telling you this in the first place,” she pointed out.

“Look, you came to my team and asked for _my_ help, which means that even if you’re part of this super-secret other society, you still needed our help, and we don’t work well going in blind.” At the end of that, Clay slanted his eyes in Jake’s direction and Jake fought not to flinch at the back-handed slap.

For a moment, it was just a staring contest between Clay and Aisha, and Emily snorted and leaned back against the couch. “Yeah, that kind of trouble, huh?”

Jolene smiled with a wicked edge. “Same thing I said.”

Huffing a sharp breath, Aisha hitched a shoulder. “I was looking into the death of my father. I knew the story was a military strike, but my father, as much as he did illegal things, did them in the otherworld, not in the human world. Or, not much in the human world; he’d had his run-ins with human authorities. In any case, I searched the site of the helicopter crash looking for the names of the soldiers sent to take out my father and found no bones that matched the names being given to the press.”

“How could you tell?” Jolene interjected, looking a little intrigued by Aisha’s description.

Aisha tapped her fingers against her arm. “I am a war witch. I specialize in battle spells and manipulation of violent energy. It’s child’s play to ask the teeth of the deceased to speak their true names, and none of the names matched any of the team.”

There was dead silence in the room.

“A war witch?” Emily finally repeated.

“Making a list of the various species and practitioners in the otherworld will take too fucking long and I’m already stretching what I can tell you, so yeah, I’m a war witch, there are different kinds of witches and I do the best when dealing with battles and death,” Aisha growled.

Clay cleared his throat. “Right, so?”

“So, I didn’t find your teeth, and I chanced that you were supposed to die but something happened that kept you off the plane. While poking around down in Bolivia, I get a message from my mother that Max has tipped his hand and started meddling again.”

“You know Max from before?” Jake couldn’t help but ask, though Clay turned to look at him again and Emily frowned. Cougar’s body swayed to move more in front of him again, but Jake gave the tiniest shake of his head. Cougar stepped to the side again, and Jake caught the considering gaze that Aisha gave the two of them before giving a small nod.

“Max has gone by a lot of different names. He’s one of the Old Ones, and that means exactly what it sounds like. He’s been around in pre-biblical times and his right-hand man, Wade, had been around for almost all of it. Max is – bad news. I wasn’t kidding when I said that if Max gets involved, world maps get redrawn. He’s part of the reason the crusades fucking _happened_ ; he was messing around in World War I and World War II, though I think the Korean and Vietnam wars weren’t his touch. He likes throwing a wrench into things every so often because he gets _bored_.” Aisha let out another sigh and rubbed the back of her neck, leaning against the wall. “For the most part, certain factions in the otherworld are willing to let him fool around with the humans, and others want him stopped for various reasons: personal, practical, moral, whatever. My mother, Rhadiyya, is in charge of a coven that’s been trying to track Max down and kill him for about a hundred years.”

Clay stepped forward, brows furrowed. “That’s what he said. Max – he smelled Rhadiyya on me or something, and he wasn’t particularly impressed with my gun.”

“He can only be killed by a beheading by silver or gold or pure iron or something similar. Unless you shot fast enough and at high enough speed to slice through his neck and had bullets of one pure metal, he’s going to come back from everything. _Everything_. I burned him alive once, before I realized how to kill an Old One, and he rose up a charred and twisted skeleton and nearly severed my spine,” Aisha offered. “None of the Old Ones can be killed by straightforward means.”

Pooch must’ve come back in the room when Jake wasn’t paying attention, and his voice nearly made Jake jump out of his seat. “Gold or silver?”

“Pure metals. Metal weapons can hurt all of us, and are poisonous when they’re pure metal. The steel most humans use won’t do a thing.” Aisha shook her head. “Ignoring, of course, the fact that most Old Ones are _called_ Old Ones because they’ve managed to hang in there longer than a millennia, which means they’re pretty fucking hard to kill.

“But, continuing on with what I was saying, my mother’s a powerful elemental witch that believes the otherworld should remain as separate from the human world as possible, so whenever Max rears his head she’s been there trying to cut off his interference. This spate of wars and terrorism has his name on it – he enjoys chaos for the sake of chaos, and a few times he’ll instigate problems in an area where a rival or someone he doesn’t like has territory, but most of the time his choices are completely random, no pattern. So I get a message from my mother that she got from my father about Max and rumors of him in conjunction with a bunch of militaries around the world. It made more sense that my father got caught up in doing something for Max and then ended up killed for it than some crazy story the humans cooked up in the press, so I figured I’d track you down and see if you could hunt down Max from your end while I hunted for Max on my end. Most of my contacts were otherworld inhabitants, but I have quite enough in the human world that I could have gotten you any type of weapon you’d have wanted, within reason.” Hitching her shoulder up challengingly, she met Clay’s eyes. “Anything else you need spoon-fed to you?”

“Why’d you call Wade a sire? And what the hell is – was – Wade? What is Max? And why drag us into this supernatural war anyway?” Clay fired back immediately.

“Wade was a werewolf, one that actually managed to live for two millennia, plus or minus five hundred years or so. I called Wade Cougar’s sire because from what I understood of the situation at the time, the two of you are indirect descendants of Wade’s line, though how that’s possible I don’t know. I didn’t realize shapeshifters could even be descendants of werewolves, let alone, apparently, humans who get turned into shapeshifters. I don’t think there’s a word for you, really.” Aisha frowned at the two of them. “Max is a vampire. Not one of those soft vampires you read about that take humans for mates or whatever sentimental crap humans in the pay of vampires come out with; this is the real deal, the monster that devours children and has fun using their skins as wallpaper. And as to why I dragged you into this – you seemed like good bait. Max knew I was on his tail, and as savvy as he is in the otherworld, he’s never that great in dealing with the human world. I know more than most otherworld mercs do, but in general humans deal best in the human world, so it would be easier for normal humans to track him through human methods while he stayed within your world. While he was within mine, well… I did my best to track him, too.”

“Mommy?”

Everyone turned to look at the glass doors that led out to the pool area. Standing there was Raina, dripping wet in shorts and an oversized t-shirt of Jake’s.

“You need a towel sweetie?” Emily asked, standing up.

Raina nodded, and Emily got up to leave, pointing a finger at the room in general. “My baby learns any bad words from the lot of you and you’ll find chili powder in places you’d never expect to find it. I think today’s discussion is over and right now we just need to figure out how to settle in here without dragging Max’s attention – because if he’s this big bad guy who doesn’t care about country lines, moving from the US to Canada won’t stop him.”

Aisha shrugged. “It might. Canada’s fiercely protected by various packs and territorial Old Ones because of how it’s still largely uninhabited. If it comes down to it, they’ll band together to keep Max out. It’s places that don’t have strong protectors, or that have warring protectors, that Max seems to focus on, but because that’s… pretty much everywhere except Canada, Antarctica, the Artic, the Sahara, the Amazon, and maybe Australia, it’s still hard as shi—”

“No cusswords!” Emily interjected.

Turning to look at the little child who was standing in the doorway, grinning widely at Aisha as if daring her to continue the word, Aisha cleared his throat. “It’s still impossible to pin down his movements or targets. And you’re right by a lake, so the chances are good that this place is protected by an elemental. Most bodies of freshwater are.”

“Right. I’ll take that tiny comfort,” Pooch growled, helping Jolene up and taking James from her arms. He wouldn’t even _look_ at Jake, though Jake figured he probably deserved it. The two of them left the room, and Clay watched them go before turning to pin Aisha with a stare.

It took her a moment before she rolled her eyes and shot a glance at Cougar and Jake. “You have no idea what you can do?”

“No,” Jake said, voice wobbling a little until he firmed it and cleared his throat. “No, I can… look into the formula that made us the way we are, but we thought it nothing more than an experimental science thing, not… a supernatural thing. Not really.”

“But Cougar had a bond, with Wade. Cougar, for sure, and maybe you too, though yours was much weaker,” Aisha said. “I assumed you were pups – humans who drank from a werewolf’s blood in order to lengthen your lives in exchange for servitude—”

“I thought that was vampire lore,” Jake interjected.

Aisha gave him a withering look and he shut up. “—but perhaps this formula was made with Wade’s blood or DNA, which would make you weakly connected to him but not under his power the way you would be if you drank directly from his flesh or if you got the bite from him.”

“So werewolves are created by a bite?” Jake asked, natural curiosity overcoming his nerves.

Huffing a sigh, glancing at Clay – who was scowling, because it was obvious he wanted to talk to Jake, but hey, longer Jake postponed that talk, the less he’d have to think about it – Aisha nodded, fingering a line on her throat that looked really familiar. “Werewolves have to bite over the jugular vein, hitting back and chest and neck all at once. Have to bite deep, get their saliva and own blood into the puncture wounds. It’s really easy to change a person into a werewolf – what’s harder is keeping them alive. Once made, a werewolf must obey their Sire – only most go crazy. Werewolves are dominant people, and they change others that could be dominant in order to try and help them live longer, but that means the newly changed buck the control. Buck it too often, too hard, and they go insane – crack their minds.”

“A scar… like this?” Jake asked, tracing a path over his t-shirt.

When Aisha nodded, Jake rubbed at the back of his neck. “Sonuvabitch,” he muttered.

There was another moment of silence, and then Aisha sighed. “Who’d you see with a scar like that, Jensen?”

“Roque. And – shit, if I think about it, that CIA spook that came to me in solitary.” Jake rubbed his face. “How long have we been dancing around this shit and not noticing?”

“Max gets involved and normal rules go out the window,” Aisha muttered, leaving the room.

Clay shot Cougar a look, and Cougar vibrated with a sub-vocal growl. Jake touched lightly against Cougar’s hand, letting him know everything was fine. After a moment, Cougar let out a sigh and stepped out of the room, leaving Jake with Clay. Jake kept his head level, though his eyes fell to the floor, and waited for Clay’s condemnation.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter - I'm so so sorry. :( Midterms and paper proposals are all due this week and as much as I'd like to pretend I've been studying for the midterm, I've just been crashing once I get home. I think it's because my brain keeps telling me I have something to do, so I'll wake up randomly throughout the night, getting maybe only two or three consecutive hours of sleep. =/ It does not make for a restful sleep, just let me say...
> 
> Still only at 133k, but once it hits Friday ALL NEXT WEEK IS CLEAR OF HOMEWORK AND PRESENTATIONS AND HOLY MOTHER OF GOD YESSSSS so I hope to be writing A LOT next week. I still have the goal to complete this story before November, even if I don't complete posting it by November. I still think I can do it, though my ending might be a bit rushed.
> 
> (Also, I apologize to any Egyptians/Pacific Islanders/Russians - I'm taking giant liberties with the places I'm now sending the Losers and the cultures/landscape/environment they'll be in.)
> 
> (Also, also, I'm not sure about Pooch's characterization in the next chapter [which is longer than this one] and just, well... everything will eventually be explained, I hope. If things get confusing, please do let me know. I will be answering comments the minute I have time to, but I'm reading them all and getting a good idea of whether people are getting what I want them to get from the story. Thank you all for your continued comments even though I've become horrible at answering in a timely fashion. D: )

Clay was – still reeling from everything that had just taken place, the huge information dump that almost literally made his head spin. From what he could gather, there was this ‘otherworld’ that had multiple species, of which Max was a vampire and Wade had been a werewolf, and Aisha had assumed Cougar and Jensen were from that same world because of their ability; was she a werewolf, too? Max was apparently this powerful vampire that would meddle in areas just – what, for the hell of it?

Now, after Jensen had stopped talking and Clay had time to process everything that had been explained or touched on, he had to admit Cougar was right – Jensen’s actions probably weren’t the sole contribution to the Bolivia situation, and Jensen’s actions had probably given him a clearer picture of what was happening than anyone else.

That didn’t change the fact that Jensen had kept something from him that he should have been informed about from the first place.

“Jensen, how many times have you gotten in trouble for hacking things you shouldn’t have?”

“Twenty-eight different write-ups and thirteen incidents you didn’t report,” Jensen replied quietly, eyes fixed on the floor.

“How many times have you hacked something you _should_ have gotten in trouble from, and didn’t?” Clay pressed.

Jensen licked his lips. “More than I can tally up at this point. Upwards of sixty separate hacks.”

Clay stepped up in Jensen’s line of view, forcing Jensen to either keep his eyes trained at Clay’s stomach or to lift his eyes to meet Clay’s gaze. It looked like Jensen really was just going to continue staring straight down, so Clay gripped at the back of Jensen’s neck and held tight. It was a technique he had used quite a while ago, on Cougar – as a cat, Cougar’s animal took discipline as a pinch to the neck, a grip that didn’t loosen. Clay wasn’t completely certain how the head horse disciplined younger horses, but Jensen seemed to respond to the same type of discipline Cougar had been given, so Clay gripped tight and pressed hard.

Jensen swallowed and looked up.

“Jensen, I take for granted a lot of shit you do. Your hacks have helped us numerous times and have been, for the most part, playful or frivolous. I know you have hacked into accounts of people we’ve taken down and squirreled money away – that’s probably paid for this place, for half the shit you send to Pooch’s family or my sister or Cougar’s sister or your family or Roque’s trust fund. I might not agree with that morally, but that money would just be snatched up by other people and I could ignore it. But situations like this, where you look into heavy shit, _get in trouble for it and then continue to do the same goddamn fucking thing_ – _that’s_ stupid, Jensen. That’s a stupidity that I can try and temper and understand if you would fucking _tell_ me things before you do it.”

“Yessir,” Jensen said.

“I am disappointed in you – first, for hiding this and not telling me you were doing it. Second, for not coming to me _immediately_ when you made the connection between your illicit hacking and the mess in Bolivia. I understand there is nothing I could have done, but you’ve been jumpier. You’ve been unstable, and I’ve had to lean heavily on Cougar to keep you calm and in control. We still don’t know what kind of tracker you have in your skin, in your DNA, if it’s a fucking supernatural tracker or something easier to comprehend, and we can’t afford to have you treading the line of control this closely. You’re part of this team, Jensen, and you better start fucking acting like it. I am your goddamn leader, whether we’re in the army or not, and you will fucking _inform me_ when something comes up that you’re not sure you can handle.”

Jensen licked his lips, and his eyes traveled up to Clay’s, finally, and rested there. Clay, objectively, understood that what Jensen did had probably not added much to their final situation. With or without that knowledge, Clay would probably have made the same call. The only difference would have been his disappointment, his disapproval, and that would have thrown the team out of whack. Cougar had obviously known, probably because Jensen just fucking broke – shit, maybe that was that whole incident right before Aisha showed up in Bolivia, and things started to make sense, Jensen’s jumpiness and nervousness beforehand and the slight cessation of tension after that day – and Cougar had kept the secret to make the pack work together.

So Clay could understand, objectively, why things had gone the way they had. What he was really pissed about was the fact that he hadn’t picked up on _any_ of it, that he hadn’t noticed how deeply the problems ran. And he was pissed that Jensen hadn’t trusted him, that Cougar hadn’t trusted him – and that they would have been right in their distrust.

“Sir, yes sir,” Jensen said softly, leaning a little back against Clay’s hand and taking in a deep breath. “I wanted – colonel, I wanted to say something but I didn’t – I didn’t know how to say it, and that’s my fault, I should have informed you right away when it was clear how deeply the whole formula went, when I started – started suspecting Aisha was more than she said. When I—”

“You did mention a bit, didn’t you?” Clay said, doing his best to keep his voice level and nonjudgmental. “You tried to warn me that there might be other biological weapons out there? And hinted that that had been the reason you brought along that Easter – that bomb?”

“Yeah,” Jensen said, a bit faintly, looking surprised at Clay’s calmness. “Yeah – I mean, I figured that the thing was an aerosol disbursement method, and I removed the chemical compound, it’s separate, nothing can happen, I swear it’s safe I wouldn’t risk us or our families like that—”

Clay rubbed the heel of his palm against the side of Jensen’s neck and let go. “I know. You’re gonna be looking for what it does, it’s radius, and what the chemical is?”

“Right now I’m just focusing on how to counteract that compound. I mean, I’m a computer engineer, but I know a few people who can get in touch with chemists and the like, and maybe Aisha can find some safe contacts or something, because we need an antidote for this thing without letting its existence out,” Jensen said, voice steadying and becoming a soldier once more, losing the animal-like fragility and nervousness that he had had earlier. “I’ll have to get on figuring out what exactly the formula that Cougar and I took is made out of, and what the tracker is in our blood. That’s it. Just those three topics, no side projects. Well, I’ll still be running a deeper-level search on Aisha, and a general pinging scan for Wade and Max and seeing how they tie in with Goliath, but those are low-level. Not my main projects.”

Clay paused, narrowing his eyes at Jensen. “How many things are you doing at this moment?”

“About… why? Do you want me to stop?” Jensen asked, that fragility coming back.

Shaking his head, Clay rubbed the bridge of his nose. “No, I guess – I’m just trying to get a ballpark figure for how many different things you have going on and how much I should know and how much don’t matter.”

“Ah – well, the search for the tracker in our blood, that’s been there since we got into the US,” Jensen said slowly. “I’ve been researching that formula and following the money and funding for it, as well as researching Fadhil and following _his_ money, since Bolivia. Aisha I’ve been trying to pin down since you gave me her picture. I’ve been trying to pin down Max since Bolivia, but have been looking in the direction of someone who builds or designs or introduces new WMD concepts and come at it from the side. Wade I thought was pretty straightforward, had no idea he was something other than a pre-first wave Procedural, so I’ve been looking into his cover story, trying to find holes in the story and trace a pattern in the holes so I can try and figure out what the truth is. But I didn’t start any of that until I saw him at that raid in Miami. And I found a guy who would build passports and identities, got everything set up for Roque that way. And that’s… that’s pretty much it.”

Clay knew Jensen could multitask but that… seemed like a lot of things to be doing at once. Clearing his throat, he folded his arms. “Well. That all sounds fine at the moment. If you add anything to that workload, you let me know immediately.”

“Yessir,” Jensen said quickly, standing up and letting out a tiny, relieved smile. “Thanks, colonel. I mean – I know I was in the wrong, but this is – this is actually really calm. Uh. A calm reaction. I mean.”

“Well,” Clay said, taking in a deep breath. “I do hope you realize hiding this means you didn’t trust any of us with it. Pooch won’t forgive you of that as easily. I can understand where you’re coming from.”

Jensen paled and glanced at the door. “I should probably just… wait before talking to him,” he muttered, and then made his way out of the room.

Alone, Clay sat down in the armchair and let out a deep sigh, rubbing at his temples. He didn’t know what to say, how to respond.

Had Jensen come to him with this, back when he was drunk every day and just offered hope through Aisha’s mission, he doubted he’d have been as rational as he was at this moment. He’d have torn into Jensen, blamed and shouted and growled and generally ignored Jensen entirely. Now, with it all over and Cougar standing between him and Jensen, Pooch seething next to Jolene while Emily looked both disappointed and concerned, Aisha looking completely apathetic and Jolene… Jolene was what kept them together, what kept Jensen speaking. Of all of them, she forgave him immediately and didn’t blame him. And – now, looking at it from a distance, looking at all of their actions in the past month and weighing every decision, knowing Jensen’s information wouldn’t have changed much. Cougar had made the right call.

Which made Clay question how firm they were as a group, if they’d fractured that much. If Clay would’ve allowed emotion to rule and not made the best decision for the group.

Which made Clay wonder whether he’d been doing the best thing for his team since the beginning.

Heaving a sigh, Clay looked into his cold coffee and slowly shook his head. He’d have to figure out where his team stood, if they should continue with this crazy quest into lands of monsters and magic that none of them had ever prepared for.

He’d have to figure out whether he could still be a leader for the team.


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 136k words, and I've got about a week to see if I can finish this story. o.O I have no idea what I'm doing anymore.
> 
> Also, thank you for all your lovely comments, your attention, and sticking with me this long! I keep pecking away at the deleted scene I want to post, rewriting the parts I have down because I'm trying to mesh it seamlessly with reality and I think I'm going to have to give that up as a lost cause. I don't know how normal military missions are carried out, after all.
> 
> And this is my dreaded Pooch's POV. I apologize.

Pooch kinda hoped that Jolene would have gone off with Emily to discuss the craziness their respective men had dragged back to the house, but apparently all she had done was hand James off to Emily and followed him into the room Jensen had given him and Jolene.

Shit, _Jensen_. Fucking kid, did he think it was alright to drop this shit on him now, after all of it? Did he think it would be just fine to say ‘whoops, forgot to tell you all this shit, here you go, and by the way, you gotta be okay with it?’

“You’re thinking too loudly, honey,” Jolene murmured, closing the bedroom door and sitting down on the bed next to him. “What’s wrong?”

Pooch looked up from where he’d been rubbing the heels of his palms against his eyes. “What’s _wrong_? What do you mean, what’s _wrong_? _Everything’s_ wrong! Jensen just – you were there, you _know_ what Jensen said, how could that be alright with you? How could anything he said be okay?”

“I got a basket of flowers from you on my anniversary,” Jolene said, turning away from him to look out the window.

The sentence was so far off track that Pooch had to try and think about where it was coming from. Then he remembered, a hot, dry night in Texas, an RV and Roque and Clay and Aisha, Jensen offering to send carnations. “I told him to do it,” he said, barely managing to tamp down his anger so that he could speak normally and not in a shout.

“I know you did,” Jolene replied, a smile in her voice. “White lilies, right? You always got me white lilies. Liked to tuck one in my hair. I got a big bouquet of them, day after our anniversary.”

Pooch winced. “Yeah, well… I didn’t tell Jensen about it, we were on the road, and goddamn him this is all his fault—”

“Funny thing, though,” Jolene continued, steamrolling over his words. “On the day of our anniversary, I got a bouquet of flowers, too. Carnations. Red and white ones, with purple and pink orchids.”

Pooch paused, trying to compute that. “On the day?” he asked slowly, trying to remember the exact conversation he’d had with Jensen that night.

“On the day. Message read ‘With love, Bitch’. Everyone in my work was so sympathetic. Told me that whatever loser I was dating that would call me bitch when sending me flowers on the anniversary of my marriage when my husband was dead and I was almost nine months pregnant didn’t deserve me. There was talk about tracking down the sender – a Port Lineson, was the name given – and charging him with harassment.” Jolene looked back at him, and her eyes were shining with tears. “And all I could think of, Linwood Porteous the second, was that time I flew into a rage at Jensen for calling you ‘Jolene’s bitch,’ because I didn’t know him yet. And I knew that those flowers meant you were alive. I took one of each flower and pressed them, framed them. It’s sitting in one of those boxes in the RV outside – but that’s not important.” She took a deep, steadying breath, and Pooch hated it when his wife cried, hated the feeling of panic and helplessness that overcame him when it happened. “What’s important, Pooch, is that I knew you were alive. Poor Emily had no idea – she was shocked, surprised, terrified even. Jensen couldn’t contact her. And I don’t know what you heard, there in that room, but I heard Jensen finally saying something he was too scared to say before. And Jensen makes stupid mistakes all the time, and you know it, but he fixes whatever he messes up and he apologizes. When you walked into my hospital room, I wasn’t – I don’t know, freaking out, or passing out, or anything that I very well could have done if that was the first I thought you could be alive. My main reaction was what the hell took you so long, when I got those flowers a week ago? And now…”

She trailed off, biting her lip, and Pooch was struck again by how much he’d almost lost, how much he _had_ lost for a space of time, was reminded of just where his mind went and reacted when he didn’t have his anchor, his precious Jolene, by his side. He reached out, wrapping an arm around her back, resting his head against her shoulder, and she let out a watery laugh. “You’re not bald anymore,” she said fondly. “It’s nice.”

He chuckled a little into her shoulder, but couldn’t shake the revelations of this morning. After a moment, he let out a sigh and said, “Jensen should’ve trusted me, Jolene. We’re teammates. He doesn’t get to hide shit from us, not shit like this. He doesn’t get to decide what we don’t need to know. That’s the team leader’s job. If I can’t trust Jensen to report what needs to be reported, how can I trust him in the field?”

“Baby, I won’t pretend to know what Jensen was thinking. I won’t pretend to know the conditions you were under. But what I saw there wasn’t someone who hid something for the fun of it. Something else had happened, and maybe you should go talk to Jensen rationally instead of making him feel worse. Because right now, it sounds like you’re upset he didn’t respect the team enough to tell them what he knew, but back in that room it sounded more like you were upset that he caused the whole mess to begin with.” Jolene patted his hand and leaned her cheek against the top of his head. “I gotta go get James from Emily. And don’t think this has gotten you off the hook, Linwood. I’m still pissed at you.”

He let go of her, but couldn’t help muttering, “Seems kinda hypocritical for you to be mad at me for not coming back if I’m not allowed to be mad at Jensen.”

“Oh, I’m mad at all of you for being stubborn sonsabitches, but I can understand why things happened. That doesn’t mean I’m willing to be rational about it, not when I had to dream of your death for weeks straight.” She flashed him a hard-edged smile before standing up and exiting the room.

Pooch watched her go. When she was out of sight, he let out a deep sigh and laid back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying to figure out just why he was pissed at Jensen and how he could explain that to the idiot tech.

But no matter how he sliced it, he was pissed that Jensen hadn’t thought to share any of that information with him. With Clay. Hell, with _Roque_. Maybe if Roque knew how much Jensen had been trying to get done, he wouldn’t have betrayed them. Maybe if Clay hadn’t thought all the blame rested on his shoulders, he wouldn’t have drunk so much. Maybe if Pooch had known about Jensen’s actions…

Well, he wouldn’t have worked well with the tech after that. Neither would have Roque. Or Clay, come to think about where Clay had been at the time. The team would have been fractured, broken.

Now that Pooch though a lot about it, Jensen had been overly eager the whole time, and Pooch could see it was out of a sense of guilt. And maybe Jensen’s cryptic warning about cats had been more edged towards himself rather than Cougar, though that didn’t make any fucking sense at all, because Jensen was a horse. Then again, Cougar had protected Jensen’s secrets.

And that, that there was another thing bothering Pooch. Cougar had known. Jensen had spilled to Cougar and Cougar had elected to keep everything hidden from the team. Maybe _that’s_ what Jensen had meant, about the cats – that Cougar was no longer acting as part of the group. Cougar should have _known_ better – stupid ideas were expected from Jensen, as well as panicked reactions when social situations didn’t fall out the way Jensen had expected, but Cougar was always in control, always put together, and the fact that Cougar had made the conscious decision not to trust the group…

He could talk to Cougar, though. He was _going_ to go talk to Cougar right now, try and get this hammered out, because Jensen would be defensive and, frankly, if Pooch saw Jensen right now there was no guarantee he wouldn’t sock him in the nose. Cougar… he wanted an _explanation_ from Cougar, a defense, wanted to hear what crazy idea Cougar could come up with to explain why he had thought it a good idea.

***

“No.”

Pooch stared at Cougar, who was sitting on the railing of the back porch, watching Raina run through the grass. “No?”

Cougar turned his head away from Raina to give Pooch a cutting glance. “No. You are looking to get mad at Jensen, go to Jensen. You are looking to get mad at me, punch or leave. I do not have to explain—”

Pooch punched Cougar in the stomach, knocking him off the railing and into the yard.

In an instant, Cougar was up and over the railing, leaping at Pooch, knocking him over, and Pooch swept Cougar’s legs out from under him, sending the other man sprawling. They hit the railing and the wood creaked.

“You’re a fucking part of this team!” Pooch snarled, anger making his punches have real intent behind them. “You don’t keep shit from them!”

Cougar snarled and slammed Pooch’s head onto the wooden porch. “You don’t deserve to know! Not one of you cared! Not you, not Clay, not Roque! Jake and I had each other and he trusted me and I would not have betrayed his trust, not for—”

Cold water sluiced over the both of them, causing both of them to freeze and splutter. Jensen stood there, chest heaving, a bucket under his arm, and his eyes glowed incandescently. “Raina,” he said calmly. “Please go inside to your mother.”

Only then did Pooch realize Raina had come to a dead stop in the middle of the lawn, staring with wide eyes at the two of them. Cougar dropped his head and let out a whispered curse in Spanish as little feet edged by the two of them and dashed into the house.

“Cougar kept my secret because I asked him to. I didn’t think he’d agree, and frankly I didn’t want him to. But he thought I deserved a chance to get back at Max, and he thought that I deserved a chance at sticking with the team a little while longer,” Jake said, voice empty and cold and Pooch remembered that this wasn’t just a kid who bopped around to music and wiggled his ass in the kitchen, wasn’t a guy who acted a full decade younger than he actually was. He was a grown man, a trained soldier, and right now he stood over the two of them, a tick in his jaw. “Pooch, you got a problem with me, you come to me. You don’t fight or curse in front of my niece. You don’t attack Cougar because he was the only one – the _only fucking one_ – out of the whole team who _thought_ about the team as a whole. You were focused on getting back to Jolene – I’m not blaming you, shut your fucking mouth. Clay was focused on Max. Roque was focused on getting his life back. _Not one of you_ was thinking past your immediate goals.”

He set the bucket down with carefully controlled violence. “So. If I had told Clay, I would have left the team. Voluntarily. But my best chance of getting Max and repaying what I’d done was by sticking with the team. So I did, and I thought about my own goals instead of what the team needed. And Cougar was there, balancing everything, weighing everyone, and decided that keeping what I had done quiet was the only way that the team stayed whole, together, and had a chance of fucking making it out alive. He did what none of us could do.”

Beside him, Cougar growled deep in his throat, a bestial growl that told Pooch more than he cared to know about how close the cougar was to coming out. “It is _not your fault_ ,” Cougar growled. “I said nothing because there was _nothing to tell_.”

“Okay,” Jensen said with a tired sigh, and all the fight and violence seemed to drain out of him. “Maybe a bit of denial there too. But Cougar has made me told things to Clay when I thought there might be a problem we’d all have to face. So it wasn’t just – arbitrary. Alright? You wanna punch someone. Punch me.”

Pooch sneered. “Nothing would give me the greatest pleasure,” he spat. “You hid from us, you _lied_ to us, you let us think it was our own stupid fault for what had happened, and for what? So you could stick around a little while longer? Well, fuck that, and fuck you!”

Biting his lip, face gone pale, Jensen breathed in deep and gave a short nod. “Alright then,” he said, and he turned and walked into the house.

“Where the fuck is he going to go, Pooch?” Cougar snarled, turning to Pooch, and there was a wild desperation and fear and _rage_ in those eyes that Pooch had to fight not to back down, not to give ground. “What now? What was your brilliant plan?”

“You aren’t needed any more than he is,” Pooch hissed.

Cougar jerked back, and there was hurt there in those eyes now, a flash of feeling that was immediately replaced by stolid resignation. “ _Si_ ,” he murmured, voice rough. “I suppose that we are not.”

Cougar stood, letting his hand rest on the railing a minute, before turning on his heel and walking back into the house.

Pooch just sat on the floor of the porch, listening to Emily yelling at Jensen, and tried to figure out what he had just done.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is longer than I meant it to be, and IDEK. Raina is an OC character anyway. And it was either Raina or Jolene, but for some reason I really want to keep the whole Porteous family as the norm to measure the others against...
> 
> And I'm running out of room, guys. o.o;; I'm still only at 137k. That means there's just 20k worth of space between the end of this chapter and where I am and I don't want to overpost and run out of that buffer. I need some serious sitting down time to just type without freaking out over final projects or whether I will actually participate in NaNoWriMo (I want to, but god, I don't have the time, not really).
> 
> Anyway. Cougar's perspective. Explanation (kinda hidden, but there) for why what Jensen did really wasn't smart. Explanation for Pooch (just as hidden, sorry).
> 
> Thank you all for reading and putting up with my rants and/or craziness. You all really make my day, even though I'm horrible at showing it.

Cougar – had known it could come to this. He’d known objectively that hiding things from teammates never went down well – it indicated a lack of trust, implied deeper problems in the team relationship, and should never be done. _Ever_. He knew that, and had still kept Jensen’s hand in the Bolivia situation hidden.

Because he would be the first to admit that he wasn’t objective, but he really couldn’t see how it was in any way Jensen’s _fault_ that they’d gotten burned. Some team was going to eventually come down to Bolivia and kill Fadhil, and be killed in turn. Max didn’t leave loose ends, they’d all figured that out. He couldn’t afford to. There was no way that they could have gone to Bolivia, followed their orders, let the kids die, and still live. They still knew about that operation, Max would have had to kill them, right?

Then again, maybe not. After all, by all accounts, Max had had dealings in the human world. Surely he couldn’t kill everyone. Maybe what Pooch and Clay were pointing out was that Jensen’s research made it look like they knew more than they were supposed to, which was what led to their situation.

In that case, well… Cougar didn’t know what to say. He’d been deliberately ignoring that aspect of it for a while.

Jensen… no one beat up Jensen as much as Jensen did. And yeah, Jensen had to be disciplined, keeping things away from the team was bad, all that was true. But what else was Jensen supposed to do at the time? What more did they expect from him? Keeping his head down and his eyes shut and his ears closed had never been a part of what Jensen was. They couldn’t fault him for going through with what they had encouraged him to do. Further investigation had always been how they’d gotten more than half their info for ops. It’d been the way that Jensen calmed down, didn’t pull the pranks that landed him with CAPE or solitary. It’d been something that everyone could agree was not the best, but certainly not the worst that Jensen could be doing.

In their room, Jensen had their bags packed and was stoically ignoring Emily’s demands for why this was important now, that he couldn’t uproot them and deposit them somewhere completely new, that he didn’t get to do this to them, that he was acting like their mother.

Jensen flinched at that, biting his lip, and he murmured something under his breath as he turned around, hefting the duffle bag higher. Seeing Cougar, he swallowed hard.

“I need you to look after Emily and Raina,” he said, ignoring Emily’s snarls and furious yelling that Jensen didn’t get to hand them off like a box of cookies to the next person who came along. “I need you to protect them from – everything.”

Cougar looked Jensen straight in the eye and shook his head no.

A wounded look appeared in Jensen’s eyes, and he stiffened his shoulders and cleared his throat. “You’re not coming with me, Cougar. My sister can do most of the things I can, and there are other hackers out there, and really, you’re not even having to hack anything, not with magic and monsters and things that go bump in the night. That’s something completely else. Technology won’t help there. I knew—” He stopped, took in a breath, and continued with empty eyes and empty voice, “I knew that by keeping this a secret exactly what I was gambling with. Hell, it wasn’t even a gamble; I knew what I was trading for this secret. And now they’ll need a predator like you; they’ll need long-range support and a sniper. They’ve got two guys with guns already; they don’t need a third. And you saw how effective my fucking horse form was at the port—” He stopped again, forcibly calming his voice. “I’m a horse. I’m an extra to this team. They’ll need you to bring Max down.”

“They’ll need both of us, _mi amado_ ,” Cougar growled, and he turned to look at Emily – who had not stopped yelling, which explained where Jensen’s crazy talking came from. She took one look at him and bared her teeth.

“I get to yell at him too, you know,” she growled. “He’s being a fucking idiot and I’m sick of it.” Without waiting for his response, she turned on her heel and left the room.

He turned to look at Jensen.

Something wild and rough flashed in the back of Jensen’s eyes, and he curled his lip at Cougar. “Don’t fucking give me that look,” he snarled. “I told you. I gave you the option of putting me down at the beginning of all this, before Aisha, before any shit happened. You didn’t take it. And now that I’m removing myself, you’re gonna look down on me?”

“You’re giving up,” Cougar responded in like kind, shoving a finger into Jensen’s chest and shoving him back a step. “You’re saying they were right all along, that you should have informed them from the beginning, that you’re not a part of this team! You’re curling up and showing your belly and that is _not_ the Jake I know!”

Jensen dropped the duffle down to the floor and fisted his hands at his sides, glowering at Cougar. In some perverse corner of his mind, Cougar wished Jensen would unleash that anger, would let it come out in violence and shouts because at least then Jensen was _facing_ it, was doing something proactive and not – slinking off like a whipped cur. “They won’t work with me. That was the problem at the beginning and it’s still a problem now – they won’t work with me because I did this. They’ll work with you, because really, who can stop the idiot with a computer from doing crazy shit? I’m the one who poked at it, I’m the one who threw up those signals to Max, and I sure as hell expected this from the outset and if I leave maybe they’ll come to terms with it and get their heads out of their asses, maybe they won’t, but if I stay they will _never_ work well together. We won’t work as a team anymore, Cougar. It’s best to just… let it go.”

“No,” Cougar hissed, stepping forward and shoving Jensen back another step. “No, I will not let go. We are _pride_. We work together and save one another and you may not break this because of a mistake. A _mistake_. We lost Roque. We are not losing you. _I_ am not losing you. If you go, I go, and I will make your life _miserable_.”

“You said once,” Jensen growled, pushing back so that he loomed over Cougar, “that if I chose to step away, you’d step away as well. That it wouldn’t matter to you. That everything would be _fine_.”

“And at that time,” Cougar responded, tilting his head up to meet Jensen’s gaze, holding it steadily, “I meant it. I still mean it. But you are not leaving because you have let go of this vendetta. You are leaving because you are terrified of fixing what is broken.”

Abruptly, all the fight leaked out of Jensen, and he turned his face away, dropping Cougar’s gaze. “I’m terrified of it never _getting_ fixed, Cougs,” he responded, voice rough. “And yeah, if that makes me less of a person, then I’m less of a person because of it, but Pooch hates my guts and Clay is disappointed and you can’t and shouldn’t have to protect me. I put us at risk, our families at risk, and I refuse to keep doing that.”

Cougar grabbed at Jensen’s shirt – at _Jake’s_ shirt – and slammed him back against the wall, teeth bared as his eyes flashed golden and tawny hair rippled down his arms. “You aren’t a goddamn quitter,” he rumbled deep in his chest, human speech becoming difficult as he fought with his teeth to keep them formed properly. “You never were before.”

“Cougar’s right.”

Both of them stiffened, twisting around defensively to see Clay leaning tiredly against the doorframe. Slowly, grudgingly, Cougar let go of Jake’s shirt and took a step back, forcing himself to become calm.

“Jensen, it’s gonna be awkward as hell. You knew it, it’s part of the consequences, and you’re gonna have to live with it. Pooch is gonna have to live with it or step back. Hell, of all of us he’s the one that can step back with the least difficulty – he’s got a kid now, and a wife. You and I, Jensen, are in this until it’s over.”

At that, Cougar couldn’t remain silent. “You are _wrong_ , Clay. You are not in it. He is not in it. It is _over_. We are safe, there is a house here, there is _nothing more to be done_.”

“He’s still got that formula. He’s still gonna use it eventually. He’s not going to stop because of us, unless we make _sure_ he’s been stopped. Pure metal, like Aisha said, using her contacts, find his home base and take him down. No different than any other bad guy.”

Cougar stared incredulously at Clay, wanting more than anything else to slap the man in the face. “He is _vampiro._ And you think he is _no different_ from any other bad guy?”

Clay ignored Cougar, instead focusing in on Jensen, who was trembling just a little under Clay’s gaze. “You said you feel guilty for keeping stuff from us. Pooch is upset, but he’ll come around. I’m not mad because you made a decision you thought would help the team during circumstances where you questioned my ability to make good decisions for the team. I’m not happy you didn’t trust me, but I get why you did. But we can set it right, get this completely over with. Max wanted us burned because we had seen that formula, and because he thought we might know something more about it. He’s not going to stop coming after us.”

“We _don’t know that_ ,” Cougar snarled. “We are not in his world. We didn’t _want_ to be in his world, Clay, and he knows this. Why would he chase us now? If Aisha says we are protected here, by the lake?”

“Do you want to take that chance? We need to end this. We lost Roque, and I don’t want to lose anyone else. I don’t want this weapon becoming the next step in biowarfare. Best offense is preemptive prevention.” Clay narrowed his eyes at Cougar. “We need Jensen to figure out what formula got put into you guys, and if it’s similar in any way to the formula we pulled out of the Easter egg. We need to find contacts in that other world so that we can analyze these things properly and get an antidote.”

Clay just didn’t seem to be getting it. “This is _not our world_ ,” Cougar said lowly, voice vicious. “We are not trained for this. We don’t know who to trust, where to turn. We know _nothing_ and you want to jump in like this is easy to understand?”

“We have Aisha,” Clay began, but finally Jensen seemed to snap out of his self-pity because he was shaking his head, frowning.

“Look, I get that you and she are bumping uglies, which is a mental picture I do _not_ need, but she’s in this for her own reasons. She as much as admitted we were bait to distract Max so she could get close.” Jensen nervously rubbed his hands on his thighs. “I’m not leaving because this is finished. I intend to stick with it. But I’m leaving because we can’t work as a team after what I did.”

Clay reached over and slapped the back of Jensen’s head – hard.

Well. That was one way to knock the sense into Jensen.

“Pooch is upset because you didn’t trust us. I’m upset you didn’t trust _me_ , but then again, considering that you and Pooch and Cougar were giving up your money to me and Roque because we were two drunks who couldn’t hold down a job, I’m more forgiving on that aspect. It’s nothing to do with your conviction, or your ability to work with us.” Clay moved back to the door. “Your sister’s pretty pissed, and has been listening at the door, but consider this, Jensen – if you leave, you might as well put a goddamn bullet in all of our heads, because you’re our best hope at figuring out what the hell is going on at the moment.”

When the door closed behind Clay, Jensen turned to Cougar, but Cougar moved first, stepping forward and crowding Jake back against the wall. “ _Amado_. Jake. He had no right to put that on you.”

“He’s right—” Jake started, but Cougar put a hand over Jake’s mouth and another over Jake’s heart.

“Listen to me. Ignore Pooch, and what Pooch said. Forget what Clay said for a moment. I want you to answer from what you know, from what you want. Will you be happy if you walk away from this right now?”

Jake stared at him a long moment, holding Cougar’s gaze, and Cougar was glad to see that whatever ledge Jake had been standing on earlier was no longer there. Jake was thinking about this rationally, weighing Cougar’s words and Clay’s and his own desires. Finally, Jake shook his head in the negative, very slowly.

Sliding his hand down from Jake’s mouth to cradle Jake’s jaw, Cougar whispered, “Why not?”

Letting out a soft sigh, Jake closed his eyes and leaned against Cougar a bit more than necessary, letting his legs go slack. “Because it’s not over. There’s still too many questions. And I can’t let this go until there’s an antidote for that formula Max was going to vaporize.”

Cougar patted Jake’s cheek once and pressed a kiss to the underside of Jake’s jaw. “Then you and I, we will stay. And it doesn’t matter what Pooch wants, or what Clay says. You and I will continue at this until you will be happy to walk away. Alright?”

“Alright, Carlos,” Jake sighed softly.

For a moment longer, they simply stood there, taking strength from one another, and then movement outside their door made Cougar sigh. “Your sister waits. I will let her speak to you. I’ll be outside with Raina, so when you are done you can come out and rest.”

Jake nodded, and Cougar took a step back, shifting Jake back into Jensen in his mind, and then moved to the door. He inclined his head to Emily, who held his gaze suspiciously before sweeping inside, and then he made his way downstairs.

***

Raina was outside, dressed in dry clothes, flopped out on the ground, giggling. He couldn’t help but smile helplessly at the sound of her joy, even as he worried about what Clay was going to drag them into _again._

He could, objectively, understand Jensen just throwing up his hands and leaving. Jensen had some deep-seated issues about not being accepted because of his temperament, personality, other form, and tendency to talk things out instead of resort to violence right off. Jensen had been on the edge about keeping things from the team, and Pooch throwing that in his face hadn’t helped at all.

He could just as objectively understand why Pooch was upset. In the field, not trusting the field leader to make the right call meant not telling the field leader everything, not following commands, and generally screwing over the entire team. Cougar knew that; hell, in Afghanistan, he had _lived_ it.

But, if he was reflecting on chain of command, it was Cougar’s fault that the information hadn’t traveled to team leader. Jensen had told a higher-ranking officer, but that officer hadn’t told the SIC or CO. Considering that Pooch had the same rank as Cougar, Cougar didn’t owe Pooch the information.

With a sigh, Cougar leaned his head against the wooden rails and watched Raina hold an animated conversation with – what looked like air. Or maybe herself. Certainly Jensen could start, continue, and end an entire argument with himself out loud; maybe it was characteristic of all Jensens, even the tiny ones.

Raina snatched up two dandelions and darted over to his side, where he was sitting sideways on the back porch, his left side pressed against the railings. Sticking her hand through the gaps, she presented the flowers to him.

“ _Gracias_ , _carino_.” He took them and held them against his dark skin, staring at them a moment, and then looked up at her. “But why?”

“You looked sad,” she stated with all the authority her eight years could give her. “And Laria said you’d had a fight but no one listened to you.”

“Laria?” he echoed, wondering whether Raina had overheard the argument between him and Jensen, and then between him and Clay.

Raina turned her head to look at her right, biting her tongue between her teeth, and then let out a sigh. “She says you can see her if you want to see her, but you have to not freak.”

Humoring the little girl, he turned his head to look to his left—

Floating in the air was an airy blue-white wisp in the vague shape of a winged snake.

He was moving before he even realized it, up from his sitting position to over the railing, shoving Raina behind him and his gun coming out before he had even registered the fact that pulling a loaded gun out in front of an eight-year-old might not be the best response.

“Cou- _gar_ ,” Raina whined, shoving at his ass with her hands. “I _said_ not to freak!”

The winged snake whipped back, a sinuous movement, and sly eyes and pointed smirk disappeared as suddenly as it appeared.

He whirled around to look at Raina, who was standing there with her hands on her hips and lower lip in a very Jensen-like pout. “Cougar, Laria isn’t like that. She’s like you and Uncle Jake, okay? So you need to leave her alone. She was trying to tell you something important, anyway.”

Trying to steady his heartbeat, Cougar swallowed and stared as the winged creature reappeared on Raina’s shoulder – and even though it was _Raina_ , his hand still twitched with the desire to shoot the potential unfriendly and get Raina to safety. “What – is it?”

“ _Who_. She doesn’t like being called an it. She’s my elemental.” The word ‘elemental’ was said with practiced ease, as if Raina used it a lot.

“I think—” Cougar started to say, but the snake curled in on itself with a hiss, flashing vicious fangs, and disappeared.

Raina shook her head. “Laria says she won’t come out if there’s a witch in the house. Laria doesn’t like witches. She just wants you to know that Mama and Aunt Jolene and James will be safe if you guys leave. She talked to Ruxkicna and he said yes.”

Putting a hand to the bridge of his nose, he stuffed the gun away and sagged against the railings, trying to figure out just how this fit in his worldview. Raina could – talk to things. Elementals. And this was normal enough for her that she treated _him_ strangely when he couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Jensen was going to freak.

Then Cougar winced. Jensen was going to _murder_ Cougar for pulling a gun out in Raina’s presence. And if Jensen didn’t, Emily would – the rules were knives only in the presence of kids under the age of ten years old.

“Did you hear me, Cougar?”

“Ah – _si._ _Si_ , _cariño_ ,” He knocked his head gently on the railing and waved a helpless hand at the air over Raina’s shoulder. “Is she – how?”

Raina bit her lip, looking undecided, and finally took in a deep breath. “Okay, well, you know how you told me I could go play in the pool, and I did, I swear I did, but Laria said it was important for me to hear what was going on because Laria is an air elemental and she doesn’t like water all that much and had been in the room with you guys and she carried the sounds to me and I could hear you talking and say that you and Uncle Jake are shapeshifters and that Ms. Aisha is a witch which is really kinda cool but Laria says witches are tricky and then Laria said that Max is bad news and he’s been capturing fire and air elementals and then I said that you and Uncle Jake and Mr. Clay and Uncle Pooch are heroes and you take care of kids like me so maybe you could take care of elementals, too?”

“Breathe, _cariño_ ,” he murmured, rubbing his forehead and trying to make sense of the deluge of information. “So – _tu_ _amigo_ is… elemental? And does not like witches, but still wants us to stop Max because he is hurting other elementals?”

Raina nodded.

Heaving a sigh, he stared up at the sky and wondered why the hell all this was happening now, when before Bolivia none of this even existed to their mind. “Does Laria know anyone who can help us?”

For a moment, Raina paused and thought about it. “Umm… Laria says to never trust anyone in the otherworld. That’s the best advice.”

Of course. “Why can you talk to – to Laria?” he asked.

“Oh. Mom’s mom could talk to things, too.” Raina kicked at the ground with her shoe. “Laria says she doesn’t really wanna answer more questions.”

Cougar nodded, and Raina dashed off with a swirl of hair and excited chatter. Cougar watched her play and wondered if this – if Jensen’s mother (a bad subject overall, he had learned) could be the reason Raina could… see whatever it was. And if that was also the reason Jensen had transformed into a horse, and not a predator the way the army had expected.

How to bring that up with Jensen was something else completely. Why Raina had decided to tell him this – well. He spoke with her, and with Jensen, more than anyone else. They had a kind of common link together, in that they both adored Jensen’s character and personality but were far more reserved and quiet than him. Thinking about it, Cougar could remember Raina being a loud, bubbly baby but growing quieter as she grew older.

Acting on a hunch, he went into the house (ignoring Aisha, who was at the kitchen table with a bunch of powders and shit in front of her, and Clay, who was watching her from the living room) and poked around until he found Emily in the room she had slept in, angrily shaking out clothes and unpacking boxes.

She turned around to hang something in the closet and jumped when she saw Cougar in the doorway. “Cougar, for god’s sake, wear a freaking bell in the house, okay?” she snarled angrily, jamming the hanger and dress into the closet and turning her back on him.

For a minute, Cougar debated not asking, or at least asking about her talk with Jake first, but decided against it. “Did Raina have a… a pretend friend, growing up?” Cougar asked, and when Emily gave him a concerned look he worried he shouldn’t have said anything in the first place.

“Raina used to play with this imaginary friend, but she stopped when she was six. Personally, I have nothing against her keeping the imaginary friend, but the school psychologist was pretty upset that Raina kept talking about her like she was real. Raina decided she’d rather not deal with the psychologist and just stopped talking about her – why, is she talking about it again? Just smile and nod and let her have her fun.” Emily shook out another shirt and folded it in sharp motions.

Humming in response to that, Cougar left the room and retreated to the room he shared with Jensen, who was sitting on the edge of the bed with his head hanging low. Closing the door behind him, Cougar sat down next to Jensen and leaned his head against Jensen’s shoulder.

“Am I really being an idiot about this, Cougs?” Jensen asked, voice tired. “Pooch is not going to work well with me, and I can’t blame him. Clay… seems to be blaming himself more than me, which is both nice and probably nicer than I deserve. Emily thinks I'm an idiot for wanting to leave, and for not explaining everything from the beginning... You – you stood by me, but Pooch is lumping you in with me. If I leave…”

Cougar bit his lip to keep his instinctive protest silent, and waited for Jensen to continue.

Rubbing the back of his neck, Jensen hitched one shoulder and mumbled, “If I leave, you guys worked as a team before me. And yeah, I do a lot of stuff that you guys can’t, because I’m awesomeness sometimes, but you also can hire any old hacker and get the same thing done. Fuck, I could _give_ you the name of three right now who’d love to be in on this. And then it wouldn’t be… messed up like this.”

“You are overinflating the problem,” Cougar murmured.

Jensen opened his mouth and Cougar turned, pressing a kiss against Jensen’s shoulder. When Jensen closed his mouth again and waited, Cougar continued, “Nothing bad will come out of you staying with the team, but it will be bad if you leave. As much as you seem to think your job can be filled by anyone… we know _you_. Pooch is upset now, and you may think he has right to be—”

“He _does,_ Cougs, I lied to him and—”

Cougar nipped Jensen’s skin through the clothes. Jensen stopped talking, and Cougar continued, “—whether he has the right or not, he will remember that you and he are friends. You have stood at everyone’s back in a firefight and protected us all and made sure our information was correct. You have been, and are, an important part of the team, and I would accuse you of fishing for compliments except I know you have a bad habit of bottling things up. So.” Cougar swallowed awkwardly – because he really wasn’t good at speech, didn’t like to use it to communicate in because words _never_ meant exactly what you wanted them to mean. Jensen needed the words, though, and Cougar had already messed up once not noticing the simmering emotions underneath Jensen’s exterior. He wasn’t going to do it again.

Licking his lips, Jensen twisted his body a little and pressed a kiss to Cougar’s forehead. “Thanks, Cougs. Carlos. Pooch will… well. I don’t know. But I do hope he forgives you, because this isn’t your fault at all.”

Cougar let out a sigh and leaned on Jensen as much as Jensen leaned on him, and if they sat there silently for a while, well… that was no one’s business but their own.


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter. Sitting at 138k because I've kinda wrote myself into a corner. I DON'T KNOW THESE PLACES I'M SENDING THE LOSERS AND MY IGNORANCE OF CULTURE AND GEOGRAPHY AND CLIMATE MAKES ME NERVOUS. Also, I'm glad that there is (some?) acceptance for Pooch, because it will get better between him and Jensen later on (they have to work as a team sooner rather than later, after all) and his reasons will become more clear (I hope) in the next time around I write his POV.
> 
> WARNINGS: in this chapter there is implication of hurting and/or killing a young (3 year old) child. o.o;; Max is evil. That really is my only excuse.

“Rise and shine, baby!”

He groaned, blinked open eyes that seemed too sensitive, wincing away from sound that sounded far too loud in his ears. There was – too much, everything was too much and not enough and he couldn’t – couldn’t deal with it—

“I want you to _pay attention to me_ when I’m speaking to you.”

The voice was suddenly a harsh curl, rough vowels and bitten off words and it had an almost instantaneous effect on his body – his gaze was drawn to the corner where a chair sat, a male human form sitting in the shadows. He tried to get up and go to that voice, but couldn’t, whimpering.

“ _Shut up_.”

His whimpers ended as abruptly as if someone had clicked the mute button on a television, and in the back of his brain he was terrified and furious, rebellious and snarling at this control over his body and emotions and reactions, but at the forefront of his brain there was nothing but fear, submission, and a sudden, gaping _loss_ that made everything seem darker.

“Your little friends killed off the guy I need to make this work right. Do you know what a pain it is to drag out a newbie and make him the head of the pack when you’re not a werewolf yourself? I mean, talk about being _rude_.” The voice clicked its tongue, and there was something oddly familiar about the voice, something that was niggling the back of his mind, but as it was all he could do was shift awkwardly, dragging his paws closer to his body as pain shot through his nerves.

Wait.

Paws?

“So look, you’re the newest of the new, the baby of the pack, but guess what? You’re a goddamn sight more dominant than any of those pussies, and you’re new enough that I still can Call you and you can’t even think about disobeying. So you’re the new Alpha, congratulations, your pack’s kinda on the tiny side because I get frustrated and need to let off steam and werewolf blood is the _best_ kind of blood, I kid you not.” The man with a voice stood up, casting his face into light and – and he was nondescript, not that tall but not short, not deeply tanned but not pale, dressed in an impeccable business suit. “Welcome to the family, kiddo. I’m Max; I’m your Master, and this is how it’s going to work out – there is going to be a global conflict that will level the human world, or at least a continent or two, whatever, I’m flexible – because there’s just too fucking many of them and I’m sick and tired of running into them at the local joint, you know?” Smiling widely, revealing teeth that were pointed and curved, the man purred, “And you, you are going to help me. And you’ve got to get trained up fast, because we’ve got some armies to disrupt and some nations to bring to their knees.”

The man paused, frowning, and finally waved a hand at him in annoyance. “I can’t speak to you like this. _Change_.”

There was a deep, searing pain in his very bones and he couldn’t stop the feral, terrified howl that ripped out of his throat and echoed in the empty metal room – and as he howled, his body tore apart and reformed, bones cracking and twisting and healing in new forms as his voice went from bestial to human and he was left panting on the narrow cot, sides heaving and slicked with blood, naked as the day he was born.

“Hmm. Scars from the fire must’ve been severe enough to leave those marks, and you’ve still got some of your old scars from being human. Odd, that. Most werewolves are new slates – makes everything so much more interesting. But you’ll never be seen as a beauty, will you? Of course you won’t. What the hell does that matter, huh? Blood-lust satisfies ordinary lust in a much more satisfying way, I’ve found. Don’t need good looks when you’ve got hot blood running down your throat.”

The picture Max painted made his belly growl, and Max smiled cruelly.

“Exactly. You and I, I think we’re a lot alike. Of course, you don’t actually have a choice at this moment – you’re either alive and like me, or I kill you and there, you’ve ceased all familiarity with me – but I suppose I need to give you a crash course on how werewolves work so you can actually get these fuckheads in line and moving in the way I want them to and learn how to make new ones so when I eat an old one, we’re not in too much trouble. Because I am going to eat you guys sometimes, and hey, it might be you, but it’s not like you can say anything against it, can you?” An annoyed beeping noise interrupted Max’s monologue and he paused. “I’ll come back to you,” he muttered, pulling out a phone and clicking his way through a menu.

It took him a long time to build up enough air to speak, enough strength to force his voice to work, but Max wasn’t looking at him anymore, playing around with his smartphone and muttering about idiots.

“What did you do to me?” he whispered, and he was worried that his voice was not strong enough even with everything he’d done to strengthen it, but Max paused in his motions, a peculiar look crossing his face.

“What did I do to you? I think it’s more accurate to say what was done _for_ you – you, my friend, are a werewolf now, and not just any werewolf, but you are one of the most dominant newly Changed wolves I’ve ever seen. Wade probably would have killed you in the plane the minute we were in safer territory, because you’ve got to understand, you’re just too unmanageable. I mean, disobeying a direct order from your Sire? That’s near impossible. In fact, the only thing that’s more impossible is disobeying _me_.” Max grinned, sharp and vicious, displaying those teeth again. “I, you dumb _beast_ , am a vampire. One of the oldest, the best, and by far the one who knows how to have a good time, none of this blending into the background bullshit. I don’t want to feed off of the druggies and homeless that barely have clean teeth, let alone clean blood, and I don’t see why I can’t shape the world in the image I desire. I’ve done it four times, after all. Seven, if you count the lower body-count wars. And Wade’s been my right-hand man for centuries and the fact that your team _killed him_ has made me _very upset_.”

The last two words were growls, too low to have ever come from a human throat and he found himself cringing, groveling, even as the back of his mind was reminded of nothing other than a toddler throwing a toy at the wall because it wouldn’t do what he wanted it to do.

Max leaned back, rocked back on his heels, and smiled charmingly, as if nothing in the past couple of seconds had happened. “So. I need a right-hand man and I can’t really remove the others because they’re in pretty important positions at the moment and I need someone who can hold onto the other newbies. That, my dear, is _you_. You are now a werewolf, you will now transform into a wolf with no human rationality on the night of the full moon, and since your Sire was blood-bonded to me long, long ago, and all of his line is as well, you’re mine in heart and soul. Hell, you may even learn how to sense others of your bloodline, which will make it easier to track your team, since the Procedurals there are made with your Sire's blood. First things first, though. What I say, you do. Now, then. You’re gonna live here a couple of days until you can figure out how to control your transformation, and we’re gonna start you off with an easy test. You hungry?”

His stomach growled and he was terrifyingly aware of a vicious hunger deep in his belly.

“Good. You’re still much too week to walk around, after the massive healing that you’ve done, but you’re good enough to lunge, to crawl, and so here you go.” Max snapped his fingers and the door opened, two men shoving in a chained and terrified young child, no older than three years old. “When you get enough control of yourself not to eat them, you can come out of this room.”

Max left, leaving Roque – terrified, confused, completely out of his depth – alone with a boy that made Roque’s teeth lengthen in his mouth.


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week has been so crazy. I'm so sorry. No long author's note, barely any increase in word count, and I'm uploading this from a coffee shop. x_x;; I'm so sorry.

“Jensen?”

“Yes! Yes.” Jake jerked awake at the words, looking around blearily until he realized that it was just Clay. Pooch had been avoiding him – and Cougar – like the plague. Only three days into their lives here and it felt like much, much longer than that. Emily had enrolled Raina in the local school, Jake had solidified not just his identity here but all of theirs, keeping some essentials while discarding the rest. The hardest of it all was for the non-combatants, the civilians, who had to pick up a new identity and remember to call everyone by the new names fashioned. Still, it shouldn’t be for long. As long as Jake could pin down this fucking formula and figure out just what the hell was in it. Finding someone he trusted not to go public with it yet was proving exceedingly difficult.

“Jensen.”

“Yeah? Yeah, I’m – I’m fine, colonel, I’m just—” Jake looked around him and realized he not only had fallen asleep with computers still running searches around him, but that he had apparently squished his face into the spaghetti that Emily had made last night and there were a few noodles still hanging off his cheek and glasses. “Um. I’m just—”

“Take Raina out to the park today,” Clay grunted, kicking Jake’s chair. “Get some fucking fresh air. I don’t want you to run yourself into the ground, kid.”

Jake blinked, trying to follow the progression in his mind – because wasn’t Raina supposed to be in school now? Or, no, not really, yesterday had been Friday, today was Saturday, no brain, no bad internet song loops in his head right now he had a bad enough headache as it was. “What time is it?”

“Early enough that Cougar’ll come down here in a few minutes and realize you didn’t eat the dinner you swore to him you would,” Clay responded, moving past Jake to the kitchen. Coffee. Jake could smell coffee.

With a grimace, he glanced at the plate and hastily scooped the noodles that had been dislodged by his face back onto the plate. He had fallen asleep at the dining room table, the fancy one that looked picture perfect for entertaining guests around but was ridiculously shiny and, well, it wasn’t looking so shiny right now. Oops. Jake took the edge of his shirt and scrubbed half-heartedly at the spaghetti sauce before moving to the kitchen behind Clay in order to hide the evidence.

Closing the fridge behind him, he turned around and jumped when he realized Cougar was right behind him. “Don’t fucking _do that_ , Cougs!” he gasped, grabbing at his chest and narrowing his eyes at Cougar.

Cougar glanced at the fridge, down at the spaghetti stain on Jake’s shirt, and then frowned.

“No, okay, look, it’s not my fault, it’s not even that bad because it’s breakfast now and I’ll eat right now, okay? And Clay kicked me out and I’m taking Raina to the park, so I’m taking care of myself, alright?” Jake instantly said, launching into a defense.

Cougar glared but turned away. Feeling as if he’d kicked a puppy, Jake turned to go back over to the dining room and close up the laptops and saw Aisha standing _right there_.

“ _JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!_ ” Jake gasped.

“Jacob Andrew Jensen, I _heard_ that!” came Emily’s voice from upstairs.

Putting aside the idea of Emily’s wrath, Jake stared at Aisha who squinted at him. “You seem much more… jumpy than normal. You and Cougar both, come to think of it.”

Cougar gave her a disdainful look. Jake looked at Cougar – who had, overnight it had seemed, gained a second wave of intense dislike for her – but when Cougar didn’t seem like he was going to explain, Jake licked his lip and tried himself.

“We can’t – we get antsy, when we can’t transform for a long period of time,” he said, playing it off as nothing important as he moved past her to save his searches and make notations about where he was in his assigned tasks. After Cougar had left the room, Clay had had a serious discussion about what should be done immediately, and long-term, to try and track down Max. The first thing, of course, was the most immediate threat – the chemical compound that could become vaporized and turn people into the things Jake had had to listen to as they pleaded to be let out of their cages while their own flesh hung off their teeth. Shivering, he tried to push the nightmarish image away and flipped the notes on the compound over a bit more violently than he needed to. He was in the long process of trying to track down some virologist that could be trusted to build an antidote, and from learning what Max was and how long he’d been around, he and Clay had agreed that Jake should look up everything possible on weapons contractors dating back to World War I, anything in the archives that had been transferred online, looking for similarities to their Max. Pictures would be best, because it would allow them to pinpoint where Max showed up and see where Max interfered the most and perhaps pin down his preferred area to live or—

“Why haven’t you transformed, then?”

It took Jake a minute to realize he had started – or, perhaps not started, but been in – a conversation with Aisha. “Ah – because the formula that lets us transform is encoded in our DNA, and it lets bases with the correct tracking procedure to find us. I don’t want to take the chance that we’re still in range of U.S. sensors, and we’re definitely in the range of U.S. satellites, and I don’t know if those are equipped with sensors or not.”

She leaned on the doorway, confused. “No one should be able to do that. There should be no human technology able to read when a shapeshifter takes another form.”

“But we’re not technically shapeshifters,” Jake pointed out as he closed the second laptop and stacked everything for easy pick-up. “We’re humans given something to _make_ us shapeshifters.”

“Magic is untraceable to other magic users; how the hell would humans find a way to track it?” Aisha demanded.

Sighing, Jake picked up everything and moved to the stairs. “You know, I just don’t know. I ask myself that every day because I have scanned Cougar and I every way I could freaking think of, tested us for all manner of emitters, of radiation, of an energy field that would tell people we were transforming and—”

Jake stopped dead on the stairs.

Aisha didn’t seem to notice it, instead grumbling as she moved into the kitchen, “Should be impossible for anyone but a Sire to track his Cubs. Not even other shapeshifters can track each other when—”

“Oh my god.” He nearly dropped everything in his arms in his haste to whip around and dash back into the kitchen, spilling the two laptops and numerous books, papers, and notepads onto the kitchen table. “Oh my _god_. Cougar, Cougar, what if we fucking don’t have anything at all? What if it was something to freak us out, make us think that we shouldn’t do it because, well shit, if we could turn into freaking _animals_ the idea of being able to track that energy transfer isn’t all that farfetched, but _what if they were just fucking with us_?!”

Cougar’s eyes were wide in his face, and there was amusement and definite interest there too, but Jake was too busy giggling like a maniac.

“Holy shit, what if we’re crapping our pants – do you know how much easier everything we’ve done would have been? Okay, not really, can’t see how a horse would have – except they wouldn’t have been able to put me in handcuffs and shoot Pooch in the legs and god _damnit_ Cougar things might have gone down differently and this means we can transform right now—”

Emily whacked Jake in the face with a spatula. While he spluttered, manic voice cut out as he held his nose, she pointed it at him and glowered. “You are not transforming into anything in the house. At all. And god help you if you poop on the lawn, Jake, because I will make you clean that up. Now stop hopping around the kitchen, get your stuff out of here, and put it away so we can eat breakfast.”

“Do you not realize how _big_ this is?” Jake asked, but then Cougar was putting a hand on his arm and pointing at the table – where Jake’s notes had knocked over Clay’s orange juice, a notepad had fallen into Raina’s eggs, and the laptops were perilously close to—

“No, no maple syrup, no!” Jake scrabbled at the laptops, lifting them up and snatching up a napkin to scrub away the splotches of the stickiness.

Cougar gathered up both what had fallen on the table and the stray papers that hadn’t stayed on the table. Tugging Jake’s arm, he took Jake out of the kitchen and up the stairs to put the information and laptops in a safe place. In the safety of their room, Cougar asked, “Are you sure?”

“Hell no! How would I be sure? Not like I have someone explaining all this to me, you know – but you know what? We weren’t that far from a base that I know has at least two Procedurals, back at the Port of LA, let me see if there was any military activity, overt or covert, and then I’ll have a better idea. And hey, we could always test it.”

“I do not think I would like your idea of a test,” Cougar murmured as Jake imagined how he could test his hypothesis, ranging from the crazy to the absolutely ridiculous. Even as his mind spun out possibilities and plausible scenarios (and not-so-plausible ones), he sat down on the bed, open laptop on his knees, and drew up the incident at the harbor. There was a bunch of local stuff, police looking into the sounds of gunshots, SWAT team called in for an explosive, fire trucks in response to a fire, but those were all fairly normal and procedural things. There was no mention of the army taking an interest or getting involved, even when looking at the conspiracy websites and poking in at the superficial records of the base by the Port of LA.

Well, he’d just have to dig deeper, wouldn’t he?

Just as he started the deeper search, one of Cougar’s hands covered his eyes. “Cougar, can’t really see if you’re doing that,” Jake complained.

“You are going to take your niece out to a park, and she’s going to speak to you and perhaps you will understand what she is trying to say, because I cannot grasp what she means or desires.” Cougar’s other hand poked in Jake’s belly, and Jake squirmed a bit, testing to see if he could duck around Cougar’s hands.

Cougar wasn’t letting go anytime soon, so Jake sighed and set the search to run. “Okay, alright.”

“There are eggs downstairs, and you must eat,” Cougar continued, waiting impatiently as Jake set the laptop down and then ushering Jake back out of the room and back down the stairs.

***

After breakfast, Clay made it clear to Emily that Jake was supposed to get some outside air, so taking Raina to the park was the best option. With Emily on Clay’s side, Jake really didn’t have a chance to check up on his search and instead was dragged out by an overeager Raina.

It kinda made him really, really sad, because Raina was extremely clingy and always seemed oriented on him when she was in the room with him. He knew, objectively, Emily had had it hard, and she was still adjusting to the fact that he was not only _not dead_ but _moved her to Canada_ , taking her away from her job, her only home, the house that she and he had built together despite the world’s best attempts to tear it – and them – down.

So he didn’t complain or pout to Cougar (because of course Cougar came along, Jake had a sneaking suspicion that Emily, Jolene, and Clay were going to try and talk to Pooch and while Jake didn’t think anyone should intervene on his behalf, Cougar gave him a death-glare when he voiced that) and instead threw himself enthusiastically into walking down the streets, getting a feel for the land and the environment. Everyone here, of course, was rich; large style houses, three or more cars in the front drive, swimming pools. Large backyards, quiet neighborhoods. Jake already knew it was a good school district, low violence. Only the best, after all, for his Emily and Raina. He wasn’t the eldest, but he’d grown up with the belief that he needed to make sure Emily was safe – from their dad, from her boyfriend, and once (memorably) from her boss. Raina was taught all kinds of self-defense tips on the sly, was encouraged to try out for ballet as much as for soccer and football. He would see something shiny – a pack of cars, or a pack of butterfly stickers – and send them to her.

They were what kept him moderately sane. Well, at least, sane for _him_ – admittedly, Pooch was far saner and it was because Jolene provided him with stability and checks. Emily gave Jake checks, but it never actually took hold.

The walk was long enough for Raina to sigh and debate (silently, but Jake could catch the signs) whether as an eight-year-old she was too big to be carried. Without waiting for her to resolve the debate, he held out his arms and she scrambled up him like a monkey. He took a moment to settle her comfortably on his shoulders, and ignored Cougar’s fond look because he didn’t want to get gooey in the middle of the street here. Or well, more accurately, he didn’t want to try and bend down and kiss Cougar when balancing an eight-year-old on his shoulders.

This early in the morning, there were barely any people at the park, but Raina dashed off to the swings. He moved to follow her and paused when Cougar put a hand on his arm.

“You alright, Cougs?” he asked, curious.

Cougar nodded, watching Raina with something that looked suspiciously close to confusion and even worry. “Ask – ask her, who Laria is? Perhaps she will explain it to you.”

That was as cryptic as ever, and even looking over Cougar’s body language – which normally gave Jake a good idea of the motivations behind everything Cougar said – Jake couldn’t pick out what this might be about. Finally, he nodded. “Are you going to join us on the swings?”

Cougar shook his head, and tilted his chin towards a jogging trail. Jake let out a comprehending sigh; after all, when they couldn’t transform, physical exercise sometimes helped alleviate the nervousness and jumpiness. Jake watched Cougar jog off (man had a great ass, he wasn’t going to lie) and then moved to the swing set.

“Push me, Uncle Jake, push me!” Raina demanded.

“Sure thing, bear-cub,” Jake said easily, stepping away from the vacant swing he was about to sit on and getting behind her. He pushed her a bit, which really did nothing to push her higher as he would run his fingers over her belly and she’d wriggle and tell him to stop it, and Jake would stop it for one more push before starting back up again, and it became a game between them to see whether she could push off the ground faster than his fingers could find her ribs. But when it died down, some ten minutes later, Jake asked thoughtfully, “Raina? Who’s Laria?”

Raina didn’t answer for a long minute, but after a few swings back and forth she let out a sigh. “Did Uncle Cougar tell you?”

“Not really, honey-bunch,” Jake answered honestly. “He said to ask you who that was, and that you might explain it to me. You don’t have to, of course, star-shine, but you should always ask if you’re interested or curious.”

Raina swung back and forth before suddenly dragging the swing to a stop. “Okay, but you _can’t_ freak out, okay Uncle Jake? Uncle Cougar freaked out and I don’t think you have a gun but I didn’t think Uncle Cougar did either.”

Well, that wasn’t comforting at all. Jake frowned, even as Raina twisted the swing around so she could face him directly. By her shins, a small creature began to solidify in the air.

Jake sat down in the sand and shavings and stared.

Raina peered at him closely. “Are you freaking out?”

Swallowing, Jake blinked twice and then responded faintly, “I might be. A little bit. Not a lot.”

“Okay.” Raina reached down a hand and patted the head of the – winged serpent? Chinese dragon? What the hell? – patted the head of the creature. “This is Laria. She’s my guide. And she says that you and Uncle Cougar need to help protect the elementals from Max.”

Jake breathed in deep and let out the breath slowly, eyes narrowing. This… was like déjà vu. He could almost see this in his past, as a kid no more than four or five, kicking around the kitchen when…

“Holy shi-sheet. Holy sheet. Holy _freaking sheet_ ,” he murmured. “You’re – you’re like Mom. Like your grandma.”

The creature made a pleased hissing noise, and Raina’s face lit up. “That’s right! Laria told me that Mommy’s mom could talk to elementals too, but that you don’t because you don’t want to and Mommy can’t. But you can see her, can’t you?”

Jake nodded slowly.

“So – well, Laria told me that it’s important to let you know that Max is eating up elementals. She hears things in the wind, because she’s an air elemental, you know. She knows a lot of stuff, what people say. It makes her tired, because she’s still a baby elemental, but she once talked to Mommy’s mom’s guide. And Laria says that elemental mages like me have one elemental that guide mages in their lives. But we can’t tell normal people, like Mommy. But I can tell you and Uncle Cougar, because you could have been an elemental mage and Uncle Cougar is a shapeshifter. You’re not really a shapeshifter, because you have two forms. You’re more… like a mage that hasn’t learned all transforming magics. Kinda.” Raina frowned and tilted her head at Jake. “Laria’s not sure. She’s still a baby, you know. She just thought that Uncle Cougar should know that we’re safe, here; the water elemental of the lake said he’d protect us from the otherworld.”

Jake did his absolute best not to pass out. As it was, he was feeling light-headed and Laria – the creature – was shimmering in his view. Disappearing.

“Is she… going?” he finally decided to ask.

Raina glanced down and then back up at Jake. “She doesn’t stay with me all the time. Only in school, you know. Or when I’m bored; she keeps me company. I don’t talk to her anymore, because grown-ups don’t like her. They think she’s imaginary.”

“Grown-ups aren’t all that smart sometime, huh, pea-pod?” Jake replied, voice faint.

Raina hopped off the swing. “Should I call Uncle Cougar back over here?”

It took Jake a couple more seconds before he was shaking his head in the negative, forcing himself to push past the revelation that rewrote his entire childhood – or, at least, the childhood pertaining to his mother (who had left before Jake was six, so there wasn’t much Jake remembered about her, but _still_ ). “No,” he said, and then repeated more strongly, “No, I’m… it’s just a lot to take in, blueberry. Is your – Laria sure that Max is doing this with elementals?”

“Pretty sure,” Raina replied, voice casual as she apparently deemed Jake well enough that he didn’t need help; she wiggled back onto the swing and began lazily kicking her feet. “She’s a baby elemental, you know.”

“I know, Raina,” Jake responded, standing up and feeling proud that his knees were only a little bit wobbly. “But – you said Laria was sure you’re safe here?”

“Uh-huh.”

Licking his lips, Jake rubbed the back of his neck and looked at the trail where Cougar had disappeared. “Well… that does change things, a little. But it’s good to know. I’ll mention it to Clay and Aisha, get some bases covered—”

“Laria doesn’t like Ms. Aisha,” Raina interjected suddenly. “She doesn’t want Ms. Aisha to know about me or her.”

Jake gave his niece a considering look before hitching a shoulder. “Okay, then. No telling Aisha.”

That was good enough for Raina; she immediately lost interest in both Jake and the conversation, pumping her legs to get herself high again. Jake considered whether it would be worth it to try and pursue the conversation, get a better answer or a clearer picture from Raina, but in the end he just sat down on the swing next to her and sighed. It wasn’t really worth it, and he was out here to forget about everything job-related and just chill with Raina.

***

Cougar came back from his run in the middle of Jake and Raina’s complicated game of ‘take the castle’ which amounted to Raina throwing shavings at Jake as he tried to sneak up onto the plastic castle from various positions, moving with almost inhuman speed (okay, alright, no _almost_ about it, but he wasn’t fully transformed, so what if he was moving faster than a human normal did?) to try and get fully upright on the plastic structure in order to ‘take’ it from Raina. So wrapped up in their game was Jake that the only reason he knew Cougar came back in the middle of it was because Cougar launched himself at Jake and knocked him to the ground, grinning widely.

Raina shrieked with laughter and came bounding down the ladder to add her slight weight to keeping Jake prone.

Striking a dramatic pose (as much as he could, pinned pretty effectively as he was), Jake gasped melodramatically, “Ahh… you have bested the great warrior in battle and you may now dance around his fallen body in victory!”

Still laughing, Raina jumped off and ran around his prone body. Cougar was more suspicious than Raina, but he too got off, and immediately Jake jumped at the ladder and hauled himself up onto the castle, placing his hands on his hips and putting his nose in the air. “Ha-haha!” he laughed loudly, head thrown back. “I am now supreme ruler and you must obey my decrees!”

Cougar threw a handful of wood shavings in Jake’s face.

Spluttering, Jake glowered at Cougar, who grinned impishly. Jake jumped down to the ground, grabbed Raina and hauled her onto his back, and punched Cougar in the arm.

“You are now _it_ , dear sir!” he crowed, and then sped off with Raina clutching at his throat and giggling madly.

It took Cougar a moment to process that Jake had instigated a game of tag, probably because Jake had said it fast enough to get away before Cougar tagged him back, and then Cougar was streaking after Jake.

Jake had a natural advantage, though – longer legs and horse-like stamina that translated over to his human body. Cougars, for the most part, were not running creatures; leaping and climbing and pouncing big cats, but of the entire cat world only cheetahs were sprinters, and even then for only a few minutes at a time. While Jake didn’t outdistance Cougar, he certainly could keep ahead of him. Raina squealed and laughed and decided that Jake was ‘kidnapping’ her and Cougar needed to rescue her.

The next time Jake looked over his shoulder, Cougar wasn’t there anymore.

Immediately, Jake came to a stop and breathed in, trying to think this through. Cougar wouldn’t catch Jake in a straight run, so the best strategy would require Cougar to be sneaky. Cougar liked high perches, and there were definitely a lot of trees and thick brush here in this part of the park. Jake’s best option would be to make his way back to open ground, but should he go back the way he came directly – the shortest distance – and just hope Cougar wasn’t waiting for him on that path? Or continue down this way, not knowing if Cougar had cut through the trees or brush to ambush him further down the line? After all, Cougar had already run this course while Jake had pushed Raina on the swings – it was not impossible that Cougar knew the route by heart now.

Keeping his eyes and ears sharp, he decided shortest way was the quickest way, and he began to jog slowly back the way he came, nostrils flaring as he attempted to sort Cougar’s scent out among all the scents of old joggers, of animals, of the earth and trees and flowers.

“Where did Uncle Cougar go?” Raina whispered.

“I don’t know, kiddo, but I’m sure we’ll find out soon,” he responded, shifting her weight on his back and putting on a bit more speed.

“Do you want Laria to find him?” Raina offered.

Jake considered the idea but discarded it. That would be like cheating, especially considering that he didn’t understand Laria any better than Cougar himself. This was a kinda training exercise, Jake assumed, and it was a game of cat and mouse (or cat and horse) that was between the two of them and not other mystical forces. “No, Raina, that’s okay. Your uncle Cougar’s just testing me, and I’m seeing if I can beat him.”

“Testing you?”

“Mmm,” Jake murmured, picking up his speed slightly. He was nearly back at the beginning of the trail, the playground up ahead, and it was only a very, _very_ lucky happenstance that he didn’t kick over the pile of rocks that acted as a trigger for a pulled back limb to hit him in the face. He checked his pace, skidding to a stop, which was when Cougar popped out behind a bush and snatched Raina off of Jake’s back and ran off.

***

They staggered back home, swinging Raina between them, and Jake felt much looser, less likely to jump out of his skin after the physical activity. When they come in, it’s clear that Clay and Aisha had come up with some kind of plan, and maybe even talked to Pooch (the van and Pooch and Jolene are gone, so Jake doesn’t know), and now, at dinner, they were all around the table with Jake feeding little James, Emily cutting up Raina’s chicken breast, and Clay outlining what was going to happen.

“The longer we stay with your families, the more likely it is for people to find us,” Clay said point-blank. Turning to Emily, he continued, “We need you safe, so we’ll give it one more day to get you and Jolene settled here, set up a strong line of communication and signals so we can get news back to you without alerting anyone who might be watching, and then we’re splitting.”

Emily didn’t look happy about it, but Jake couldn’t blame her. After all, she’d only just got them back, and already they were planning to leave.

Aisha went on with the outline, capturing Jake’s attention. “We’ll be splitting up into groups – Clay, Pooch, and I are going to secure some otherworld weaponry and pick up an otherworld expert who can analyze that compound we found in the – the Easter egg. You and Cougar are going to go get enough passports and money to get us successfully over from Egypt into Russia, where I suspect Max is holing up. I have good enough contacts to get us to Egypt without any problem.”

“Why Egypt?” Jake asked.

Aisha shot him an irritated glare for interrupting, but Clay – probably because Clay is used to Jake’s interruptions and questions – rolled with it and just answered. “The coven of – witches, I guess? – that hired Aisha are there, and we’re hoping to get them to give us more information in exchange for killing Max. And I believe that’s where the otherworld expert is on healing and diseases, so they can analyze what’s in that compound and how to neutralize it. You guys should only be a day or two behind us, frankly; most of the contacts we need Aisha can get to here or back in the States, and we’ll just head out earlier than you two.”

“Alright.” There wasn’t more to say, after all – and Jake wasn’t crazy enough to argue when he didn’t know why he should be arguing. Just because he didn’t quite like Aisha latching onto Clay in the absence of the team… For all he knew, the elemental’s uneasiness around Aisha could just be some latent racism or something, one supernatural race disliking another. He really wished there could be a way to do hard research and fact-gathering about the otherworld. Relying on other people often meant accepting their bias as well, and he’d like to decide who to hate on his own, thank you very much. “Where will we meet up?”

“Port Said, in Egypt,” Aisha responded. “Cougar will fit in, but you and Clay – not so much. You might consider dressing the part, if you can, or finding good cover stories. We’ll meet up at the Ferial garden.”

Jake gnawed at his lip, glancing over at Cougar, who seemed perfectly fine with everything. Well, Aisha did know that area better than them, and on top of that, this was her contact and her show at the moment, so it made sense to bow to her knowledge. “Okay,” he agreed. “You guys won’t need passports to get to – to Egypt?”

“Our current identities will get us to Turkey and then we’ll take a cruise ship from Turkey to Egypt, where Aisha insists we should be able to find this expert with no problem. You and Cougar can come straight once you’ve got money, weapons, and good enough passports to get us into Russia without Max perking up and noticing us entering his home ground.” Clay leaned back in the chair, looking too smug, really.

“So… Max’s in Russia?” Jake ventured.

Clay shook his head in the negative. “Aisha thinks he’s in Russia, but we have no confirmation of him doing anything more than stockpiling weapons there, considering that that’s where Wade disappeared to when he dropped out of active duty and retired and Aisha has confirmed that Max has spent, in recent years, a lot of time in and around Russia. Your hacking can confirm that, and can check into his operations being present elsewhere, but Aisha tells me it’ll be easy to get into Russia and double-check this without setting off alarms. Something about how the Russian otherworld isn’t quick to notice people poking around, much like the Russian human world.”

“You not only need to get us as much cash as possible, should things go south, but you need to get much of your searches done before you come over,” Aisha interjected, and Jake was mildly insulted that she’d think he needed to be told that. “Over there, searches could easily bring you to the attention of the otherworld as well as the human authorities, and where we’re going, being white is a strike against you, not for you.”

“Thanks for that, I’ll log that away,” Jake muttered, standing up from the table. “If you’re just gonna tell me my job, I think I can figure that out myself, thanks. We done here, Clay?”

“Yeah,” Clay said, though he looked annoyed that Jake had cut Aisha off so quickly. “Aisha, Pooch, and I are going to be leaving tomorrow morning; you guys should head out maybe a little ways after.”

Cougar stood up as well. “ _Si_ ,” he murmured, though his quiet voice was just as efficient as ending the conversation as Jake’s sarcasm. After all, they were both special operatives, they knew how to keep a low profile and a clean getaway.

Jake almost made it all the way upstairs before Emily grabbed him and tugged him aside. Jake cast a pleading look at Cougar, but Cougar just smirked and continued to their room.

“You don’t need him to help you if I’m talking to you, Jesus, Jake!” Emily sighed.

Jake squirmed under her disappointed exhalation and tried not to think about what he could have done _now_ to elicit that response from her. “You have to admit I haven’t done so well on my own,” he finally muttered, watching her carefully for any possible disagreement.

“Jacob Andrew Jensen, stop fishing for validation,” Emily growled. “You did something _wrong_ , and you know it. That’s not the end of the world, and I’d thank you – in fact, I’m pretty sure your whole _team_ would thank you – to stop treating it that way. Your decision didn’t harm anyone unduly, everyone’s alive, and fine, for the most part, and can I just ask a question without you looking like you’re going to melt into the floor?”

Jake squared his shoulders a bit, putting a hand out to her upper arm. “Sure thing, Ems,” he murmured. “Look, we’re going to be fine, okay? You’re going to be fine, Raina’s going to be fine – I’ve made plans for practically every contingency. You don’t need to worry.”

“Vampires and shapeshifters and witches – Jake, I never planned for any of this. This is – so far from every possible contingency that we could have planned for. I don’t – I don’t know what to _do_. We’re – god, we’re not even in the United _States_ anymore.”

Her voice got progressively softer and shakier, and Jake pulled her tight to his chest, wondering for not the first time how he’d come to tower over the bigger sister who had been the biggest protector in his life. “Hey, hey, Ems, we’re good, alright? We’re _good_. We always made plans to go to Canada, remember? Before Bobby, even before Raina, _after_ Raina, yeah? This has – hell, this was supposed to be a surprise for you, once I got out of the Army, once Raina got done elementary and middle school, maybe even high school. This was always in the works, Ems. It just got moved up faster than we expected.”

“Jake… you were _dead_. It doesn’t matter if you came back – for those months, you were _dead_ and nothing will change the fact that I cried myself to sleep every night those months. Nothing will change the fact that Jolene couldn’t handle living in her house with memories of Pooch on the walls and she went to keep Pooch’s mom company. Nothing will change the fact that – that we now have different names, different jobs, different _schools_ , we’re cut off from everything before – it’s like witness _protection_ , Jake—”

“I know,” Jake murmured, tucking his chin over the top of her head. He rubbed his hands over her back, just being strong for her because she deserved a breakdown. After all, he’d had his own breakdown, they just made plans to abandon her and Jolene here in a new country without the guarantee they’d come back alive, they’d dropped the bombshell of this ‘otherworld’ on them that they never had to think about before… He gripped her tighter and breathed out long and slow. “We’re gonna do our best to come home. There’s more than enough money here for you and Jolene both to live comfortably, to send Raina and James to college, to keep up the house. I know you’re as business-wise as I am; you can increase that easily through investments. I’ll keep in touch through junk mail and spam email and the like, you know that. Now that you’re here in Canada, it might even be easier to secure a face-to-face connection at certain times, let you talk to us and let us talk to you. _We’re going to come home_ , Emily. We’ll never leave you unless we have no other choice.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” she whispered, fingers curled tightly in his shirt. “Jake… you may not come back. I thought I was ready for that, but then it happened, and I was _not ready_. I don’t want you gone, okay? I just want my family, here, safe.”

Swallowing, Jake leaned back a little, chucked Emily’s chin up so he could look her in the eyes. “Emily, you’re here because we want our families safe, too. You think you’re not Cougar’s sister, or Clay’s? That Pooch wouldn’t lie down his life for you – or me for Jolene?” He took a deep breath and continued, “Max has come up with a weapon that is – horrific. And he has plans to use it. He almost _did_ use it. He can’t be _allowed_ to use it, not with what it could do to the world, to humans, to the planet. I don’t know why – Aisha’s pretty dead set on the fact that Max is just crazy, just wants to watch the world tear itself apart. I don’t think so. Max – if we can believe Aisha, and I saw the crazy motherfucker and I heard him speak – has been around a while, and is completely, coldly, rational. What he does, he does for a reason. If I can find out that reason, stop it, you’re safe. The _world_ is safe.”

She laughed weakly, eyes shining with tears. “Why you, though,” she murmured, scrubbing roughly at her eyes. “Why you? Huh?”

Jake chuckled wearily. “’Cause no other fuckers’ are as crazy as we are. Wrong place, right time. Bad luck of the draw. Karmic punishment for – stuff we did in previous lives.”

She took a deep breath in, trying to calm herself and shook her head at him. “What did I say about language?” she joked, voice shaking.

“Oh god, Ems,” he breathed, gripping her tight and hugging her. “C’mon, don’t do that to me. I don’t want you to be sad, please, think of it as us stopping our own personal Voldemort. Only more insane, and more dangerous.”

“That’s not helping, Jake,” Emily scolded, but she was steadier, and she gently disentangled herself from his arms. “You’ll keep in touch, you hear me, Jake? You keep in touch and the minute it looks like it might go south – you _let me know_. Don’t you dare keep my hopes up and then vanish forever. I need – some build-up. Some warning. I need to be able to tell Raina that she shouldn’t keep looking at the door, expecting you to walk in. Okay?”

“Okay, Ems. Alright,” Jake promised. It shouldn’t be too hard – here, there was no spies on his house, no one noticing that they moved in here. Even if it looks suspicious that two women with two kids suddenly appeared not that far away from Jake’s sister’s house, well, he’d have a heads-up if someone set spyware on the house computers, if someone broke the security. And he was fairly confident that no one _could_ – after all, this had been his reserve house, the retirement surprise he’d been building and crafting to meet his meticulous standards. This was going to be the place he could retire to and be safe in, no matter what hacking he did within its walls, and that was really the only way to put this house on the map. He had Raina’s little air friend that told him the family would be safe, mystically speaking, and while he didn’t know how much stock to put in that or whether it would really work, but he had to trust that what he could do would keep them safe enough from normal human interference. Aisha had already confirmed that Max had little influence in Canada, didn’t want to deal with Canada, so he had to trust her word in that respect.

She stepped away from him, patting his hand once before taking in a deep breath and letting it out. “I need to find a job, don’t I?”

“Your cover story is pretty much close to what happened, if it helps,” Jake offered. “You and Jolene, two war widows, wanting a new environment and finding it here. You have money to live off of, not too different names, documents that will hold up against all but the most stringent of checks. There are a bunch of jobs that can be done from home, the job market’s not that bad around here, and Montreal’s not that far away; you could get a job in the city. You could just not work, and Jolene not work, and as long as you keep things frugal and sane and not go crazy, you can still send Raina and James off to college. You invest, and you don’t have to be frugal, and you can survive even after sending them to college. Okay? Everything – everything’s set up. When we leave, all the account information, the back-up info, everything, it’s in the safe in the master bedroom, you know the code, everything’s set. I did – everything I could to make you safe. To make you okay.”

“I know,” Emily said softly, and her smile was sad. “I know you. You wouldn’t just leave us with – with nothing.”

She moved down the stairs, and Jake watched her, feeling a visceral need to keep her safe, keep her protected.

“Jake.”

Jake looked up to see Cougar looking at him worriedly from their shared bedroom. Cougar’s eyes were dark, understanding in a way that Jake didn’t need at the moment, and Jake dropped his gaze and instead pushed into the room.

“Jake.”

“Let me look over the search I had running and I’ll be able to figure out whether the army responded at all to what happened at the Port—”

Cougar let out a long sigh and cast his eyes up to the sky. “ _Lo juro_ ,” he sighed, and then he was bumping Jake in the side with his shoulder. “I will make sure you come home to her.”

“No, you’ll make sure we _both_ come home,” Jake corrected instantly. “It’s fine, okay? It’s just…”

With his eyes trained on the results of his search and the few leads he picked up, he couldn’t see Cougar’s face, but he could hear the warmth when Cougar murmured, “You do not like leaving her on her own. But she’s strong, Jake. You are both very strong people. And she will have Jolene.”

“Pooch shouldn’t even be coming with us, man,” Jake replied, one leg bouncing nervously. “He should stay with his kid and his wife. Clay might need my hacking and Aisha’s contacts, but you could stay and Pooch would stay and be safe.”

“Are you implying Pooch and I are unnecessary?”

There was incredulousness in Cougar’s voice, and some anger, so Jake turned around immediately, back-tracking. “No, no! Okay, maybe it came out wrong, but it’s – we’d definitely do better with you both, but you could be safe and we’d – we’d make it, you know? And you won’t have to risk your life, you won’t have to go on this crazy quest off the grid with no sure guarantee of getting your name cleared – you could be safe, you know? _Safe_.”

Cougar’s eyes were narrowed, but after a moment, he shook his head and a fond look appeared in his eyes. “ _Mi amado_ , I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I was.”

That seemed to answer that, and though Jake held Cougar’s eyes a little longer, looking for any uncertainty or resignation or – or any negative emotion at all that would imply Cougar was only putting up with this for Jake’s sake, he didn’t see anything there but calm acceptance.

“Fuck, Cougar, how many times are you going to have to be the calm rock in all this?” Jake sighed.

Cougar smiled pleasantly. “Until we have time to get into why you threw yourself in front of a bullet.”

Jake, who had been turning to his laptop again, stopped and whipped around in confusion. “What?” he asked, trying to place the odd statement. “Cougar, what—” Events from Clay’s hotel room and Aisha popped into mind and he swore, loud enough that Emily snarled a warning from the hallway. “Cougar, that was…” he counted mentally and winced. “Five days ago?”

“And we have not had privacy or time to discuss your desire to play the fool and forget your gun,” Cougar responded placidly. “We will, later. I can wait. I am very patient, after all.”

“Fuck you,” Jake muttered, pulling his laptop open and balancing it on one knee. “It was necessary and you knew it.”

“Leaving your gun in the van was unnecessary,” Cougar murmured.

Jake hunched his shoulders, glad for the distraction but mildly worried. Cougar’s punishments were wildly inventive, and could range from super-gluing mittens on Jake’s hands for a week, making him unable to type, to shrinking all his underwear in the wash, to cold silence that could last for a week. Jake _really_ hoped it wouldn’t be the silent treatment – as much as it was effective, and adequately demonstrated Cougar’s fury, after Bolivia he wasn’t positive he’d be all that sane in regard to experiencing a shut-down again. Which, of course, was mostly his own fault – he probably shouldn’t project that onto Cougar in any way. Cougar had the right to punish him, after all, for what Jake had done. Jake _had_ been playing with fire and he _had_ been told, numerous times on many other ops, to not forget his weapon in his rush to hack or relay information or any one of the multitude of things by which he would regularly get distracted.

Shaking himself out of those thoughts, he clicked through his search, looking critically at the different results. “From what I can tell,” he mused, doing his best to slip seamlessly into and out of the protected servers of the army’s research facility to chase up the few leads, “they got involved because of the explosion, but they were shut down pretty fast by the CIA. Looks like they didn’t send out an alert about us, though. I can’t tell what they’re looking for, if they would send an alert out, though.”

Cougar didn’t respond, not that Jake expected him to. Sinking into the world of lines and code, he didn’t even notice when Cougar left the room.


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.
> 
> I got Book 1 and Book 2 of the Losers a while back and have finished reading them. I just got back from watching Red Dawn. I am not exactly in my happy place at the moment.
> 
> I am also at 140k+ words (just barely. That plus is like, 45 +/- 10 words.)
> 
> This is... a difficult chapter. Because this is where things start to fall heavily into my head and so if things don't make sense, or if things are contradicted by canon or even by my own story... let me know? There might be a reason it contradicts, but it might also be just a massive oversight on my part. It's a 50/50 gamble. Also. Clay's POV, and he's not easy to write by any stretch of the imagination. (If I were to rank them by hardness, it'd be Pooch, Clay, Roque, Cougar, and Jensen.)
> 
> I apologize for posting this so late. I'm going to go through and answer everyone's replies now, and type more. I'm hoping (fingers crossed) to crank out at least an addition 2k words by tonight because Thanksgiving break doesn't mean much to a family that doesn't celebrate it beyond long stretches of time where I'm just sitting on my laptop.
> 
> But. I'm just. Really tired, I guess.

“You never questioned my contact.”

Clay tilted his head to the side as they stood in line at the airport, passports ready and documentation clear. Pooch was a couple of people ahead of them in the line because the lucky bastard picked the fast-moving one and not the one with the ridiculously large family who chatted and laughed while they took off their shoes and flipped their luggage up onto the scanning machine.

Maybe he was just bitter. Having Jolene and Emily threaten him with death if their family wasn’t kept safe could do that.

“Clay.”

Clay slanted his eyes over to Aisha, who stood behind him elegantly, hair tied back, a long-sleeved shirt tight against her sides. If he didn’t know she had knives hidden against the flat of her back and belly, no one could see. Glass knives, apparently, specially treated with whatever it was witches treated their knives with. He had no fucking clue, personally.

“Maybe I’m conceding that I know absolutely nothing about this world and if you say this guy can analyze this shit, I believe it?” he finally responded, stepping forward and shifting to start taking off his shoes.

Aisha stared at him closely before flipping her hair over her shoulder and looking over at Pooch, who was through the checkpoint with no problem and was putting his belt back on. “Well. Alright.”

“Did you _want_ me to question you closely?” he asked, moving towards the security guards.

Once they’d gotten through security – as much as it’d been easier to go through Canadian security than American at airports, Clay had needed to pick up some more things and Pooch had insisted on stopping by his grandmother’s place (Clay hadn’t been certain it’d be safe, but since they were leaving the country anyway, and the visit wasn’t going to last more than an hour, and all three of them hadn’t found any surveillance of any kind, Clay had let it slide) – he grabbed his shoes and slipped them on, found his belt and threaded it through his waist as Aisha slipped on her heels and waited for him.

When he picked up his phone, he saw that Jensen had texted him (not Pooch; he and Pooch were still on the outs, and it bothered Pooch almost as much as it bothered Jensen) his and Cougar’s updated plans, their movements in Maryland, and a ‘test’ that Jensen was being specifically vague about.

“I guess I don’t really want you to, not particularly,” she murmured, but she sounded – confused. Uncertain. “Still, you accepted that this – all this – was happening without – without a second thought?”

“Hell no,” Clay grunted, hefting the duffle bag onto his shoulder and lifting his other suitcase up as they made their way down to the terminal. “I’m having tons of second thoughts. Third and fourth and fifth ones, too. But I know what I saw, I know what my men can turn into, and you already proved you had magic. That you’re a – wolf.” He cleared his throat, realizing what that must sound like to people around them, and focused on just making his way to the seats to wait for their plane.

“I’m not.”

He tilted his head up to look at Aisha, who was looking at him in confusion. When he did nothing more than raise an eyebrow at her, she huffed out a breath and said pointedly, “I’m not a werewolf, Clay. What gave you that idea?”

Brows furrowed in confusion, he gestured to the slight edges of the scar that peeked out of her collar. “You said anyone with that scar—”

“I’m a witch, though. Clay, otherworld races are just like human races; you don’t just become a werewolf or vampire if you were, say, a troll or a witch or a sorceress first. The werewolf mistook me for a human.” A lazy, predatory smile curled her lips into a semblance of a smile as she sat down across from him. “He regretted that assumption, in the end.”

Clay found that wildness, that hint of a feral nature underneath the clean, smooth lines of femininity and poise, almost painfully arousing, and he licked his lips. Her eyes dropped to his mouth, and she smirked before pulling a novel out of her bag.

It was the smirk, coupled with a lot of other things, that had him opening his mouth to ask her another question – and then he stopped. He turned his next words over and over in his head, and in the end decided not to ask at all. There was no way he could ask without seeming paranoid and –

Well, okay, he _was_ paranoid, but he drew the line at asking the girl he was regularly getting some with whether there was such a thing as lust potions or the like. After all, his track record had proven that he was always attracted to the crazy ones. He didn’t need any supernatural help to screw up and endanger his team because of a woman. There was, after all, that woman who’d threatened to cut off Pooch’s fingers, the other woman who had been brave enough to suggest a threesome with him and Roque, and of course, he couldn’t forget the _bomb_ in his _car_. That one pretty much topped the list.

So yeah, okay, he had endangered his team by letting Aisha come along, he’d taken her word over Roque’s quite a few times, he’d not kicked her out when she deserved it. He’d just thought it was his normal, well… _weakness_ , he’d call it, around women like Aisha. He’d thought it was an outgrowth of the burning rage he felt almost every single day, seething under his skin.

Now, with the option of magic thrown in?

But he _couldn’t_ question it. If they were going to find Max – and Clay was convinced _that_ part of it was real – they needed help maneuvering Max’s world, and Aisha was their best bet. She already was a part of that world, she already had been tracking Max for a while, she clearly had an agenda but for right now it aligned with the Losers’ own. Whether it would continue to do so, Clay didn’t know, but for now… for now, he wondered. Worried.

Aisha side-eyed him as they got up to board the plane, walking behind Pooch, but didn’t say anything to him. He was thankful – his thoughts were not the most pleasant at the moment and he didn’t really want to focus on them. Or, at least, have _her_ focus on them.

“The Pooch does not like this plan,” Pooch muttered under his breath, standing in line as they moved slowly onto the actual plane. Aisha and Clay didn’t acknowledge his words outwardly; there wasn’t anything to say, really, and the less they looked like a cohesive group the better. Max would be looking for a group of people, after all.

Clay agreed with Pooch’s sentiment, though. He didn’t like trusting someone he hadn’t met himself. He didn’t like putting his faith in a woman that had already lied to him once – _twice_ – and what was that saying? Fool me twice, shame on me?

Yeah. Clay was feeling shame right about now, and was worried it would become something much, much worse than shame.

When had he lost control of the situation?

***

Probably, he thought muzzily, around the same time he let alcohol and a hot woman and his downstairs brain do the thinking for him.

He woke up with a pounding headache and an armful of warm flesh. While he’d normally be absolutely thrilled about both, they _are_ in the middle of fucking Egypt. Of course, they’re also squatting in an abandoned warehouse that affords the bare minimum of shelter from the sweltering heat. He’d forgotten how hot his balls could get with the sun reflecting off the sand – it’d been a while since he’d been in the Middle East.

Aisha muttered something and twisted, and his brain stuttered to a halt for a bare second before he kick-started it again. Now was not the time to think about her. They were here, Cougar and Jensen should be meeting them shortly, and then they should be picking up Aisha’s contact and making their way from Egypt to Greece to Moscow. Piece of cake.

Pooch was on the entire opposite end of the warehouse, army rations cooked in make-shift bowls. Clay frowned at the cooked food and Pooch snorted.

“Sun outside cooks it in the can better than me starting a fire,” Pooch said dismissively. “You gonna sit down and eat with me or keep glowering at me from above?”

Heaving a sigh, Clay folded his knees, wincing at the popping noises, and sat down next to Pooch. “I’m getting too old for this shit,” he grumbled.

“I hear ya,” Pooch responded too quietly, and Clay shoved aside his own thoughts to study Pooch carefully. He knew his mechanic and driver was – well, floundering was probably the best word for it. Magic and vampires and werewolves – all this was stuff none of them should ever have had to deal with, and Pooch had a family waiting for him. He’d been dragged around pretty much nonstop since Bolivia and Pooch had been the voice of reason time and time again.

Well, okay, barring the jet purchase suggestion.

“How’re you holding up, Pooch?” he murmured, picking up one of the bowls and poking at it with the fork.

Pooch laughed, voice tight, and when he looked up at Clay his eyes were empty. “What does it matter, huh? I’m here on this crazy quest, aren’t I?”

“You don’t have to be. Neither does Cougar, if it comes down to it. Or Jensen. I don’t want you guys here if it’s going to—”

“Clay, just… stop.” Pooch shook his head and scrubbed at his face. “You saying we’re not useful? You don’t need our skills?”

“No – that’s not—” Clay backtracked, frustrated. That hadn’t been what he was saying; he was trying to give Pooch a way out. Trying to let Pooch go back to Jolene and little James.

Pooch leaned forward on his knees, eyes burning holes in Clay’s head. “That’s _exactly_ what you were trying to say. You’re on this fucking quest to slay the dragon? We’re behind you. You’ve steered us wrong _once_ and once only – and that, Clay, wasn’t Bolivia, wasn’t LA. It was that fucking run in Miami, when Aisha _used_ us without at least slipping a fucking condom on, okay?”

Clay winced, but Pooch was barreling onwards. “No, I don’t have a problem with your guilt, okay? I wake up sometimes thinking that I’m still smelling those kids burning. I wake up sometimes and know that whatever psychopath would order us to burn a compound to the ground with kids inside is not someone I want to be fighting for. But you gotta fucking understand, Clay – Roque was _right_. Shit like this happens _every fucking day_. The reason I’m here is because what Jensen said was right – a compound that could do what – what he described – shouldn’t be in _anyone’s_ hands. The fact that it _has_ been developed means that it’s now open game. There’s no way to put the genie back in the bottle, and you and I both know that. What we can do is find someone to neutralize it, then get it to the right people. Publicize it. That’s why I’m here. Ending Max – that’s secondary. That’s extra. But if he’s been around as long as Aisha says, if he’s as crafty and wily as Aisha believes, who the hell do you think we are that we’ll get the job done? Why do you think we’ll make any fucking difference at all?”

Pooch abruptly stopped, and looked away from Clay for a long moment, staring out the broken warehouse windows at the blazing sun. Heaving a sigh, Pooch rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head once. “I – fuck, that wasn’t what I wanted to say.” Letting out a long breath, Pooch said softly, “I just – look, you guilt-tripped us all into this. Maybe Cougar has his own reasons to be here – Jensen sure as hell has his reasons to be here – but in the end, if you told them to let it go, if you told them to suck it up and go on with their life, _they fucking would have_. Okay? So when you say we don’t have to be here – don’t, don’t fucking lie to me. You want us here because we are literally the only fucking solid things in this world at this point. Aisha could be taking us to Max in a gift-wrapped box and we wouldn’t know. We didn’t grow up in her world – it’s like expecting a green army recruit who only just finished Basic to act like a fucking diplomat to a tribal elder, okay? We are so far out of our depth that it’s not funny. But we’re following you, Clay, because you’re our goddamn leader, so give us the goddamn dignity of our choice. Okay?”

Clay swallowed hard and dropped his gaze, staring at his food. In a way, Pooch was right – Clay _knew_ he was guilt-tripping his team, knew that he shouldn’t be dragging them into this nightmare, but he honestly believed they needed to get something done. If it’s true that Max had been around so long, evading the policing of his own kind, it only spelled trouble for humanity. _Someone_ needed to stop the bastard, and even Aisha had recognized the use the human team had. If it came down to being a distraction, well… that’s why Clay kept on saying Jensen and Cougar and Pooch didn’t need to be here. He didn’t want them to lose their lives over being a _distraction_ so that someone with better equipment – magic, he guessed, in this case – could take out the bad guy.

“I’ll give you your choice,” he finally said, looking back up to meet Pooch’s eyes. “But I’m gonna keep on saying that you don’t need to be here because while I would fucking hate to be the only one here, I don’t want you dead because of my white whale – and I _know_ it’s a fucking white whale.”

Pooch held his gaze and they stared at one another for a moment before the corner of Pooch’s mouth twitched up. “Well, if you can fucking recognize it, I suppose I can accept it,” he murmured, looking back down at his food. “Eat your fucking beans.”

Halfway through his meal, Clay remembered that Jensen and Cougar were supposed to check in, meet up with them in a day or two to continue on to Greece. “Jensen contact you?” Clay asked. It was a loaded question, because Jensen had been acting extremely skittish with Pooch and Pooch had been acting exceedingly abrupt with Jensen. Still, eventually they were going to have to come to some kind of agreement and work together to pull off the concept of teamwork.

“Funnily enough, yeah,” Pooch muttered, and he sounded vaguely guilty. “Text only, though, letting me know that he’ll be acting out the student backpacker with Cougar. They’ll be in the gardens for about an hour tomorrow after the first call to prayer.”

Clay nodded, finishing up his food. “You any closer to working well with the man?” he asked off-handedly.

Pooch let out a rough sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose and growling under his breath. “He had no right to keep that shit from us Clay. You know it, and I know it.”

“I know it,” Clay agreed, tapping his fork against the tin plate. “I also know that if he’d come to me then, and told me it, I would’ve stripped the hide off him and leave him bleeding on the jungle floor next to that helicopter.”

Pooch’s head jerked up in surprise.

“If it helps—” Clay took in a deep breath, let it out, and did his best to keep his voice level. “If it helps, I don’t think he meant to keep shit from you. I think he wanted to stay on my good side and knew I wasn’t in any state to handle that kind of news. Roque neither. And while he should have told you – he told Cougar, after all – he kept it bottled up because he’s an idiot. Not because he didn’t trust you. Because he did – he does. He just didn’t trust _me_.”

“That doesn’t make it right,” Pooch said fiercely, but Clay could see the consideration, there, the careful weighing and evaluation of Jensen’s actions in light of that new information.

Clay hitched a shoulder. “Were any of us really in any state to make _right_ decisions at the time?”

Pooch glowered at Clay and began cleaning up the food, packing up his kit. “I’m gonna pound him into the dirt when we meet up,” he growled.

Clay smiled and stood up. As much as it sounded like a punishment – which it was – once Pooch actually knocked Jensen into the dirt a couple of times he’d forgive him, Jensen would realize Pooch had forgiven him, and Jensen would spend the next week trying to make it up to Pooch in various ways. “I’m gonna make sure we’re up and moving. We should be collecting Aisha’s contact today.”

***

That evening, they were walking through the market, Clay and Aisha dressed in traditional clothes (more for Clay’s benefit than Aisha’s, because Clay was so white he fucking glowed and everyone would notice if he wasn’t wrapped up in cloth) with Pooch in the same market though not part of their group. They kept eyes on one another, moved slow enough that Clay could keep watch for Pooch and Pooch could keep watch for Clay, and did their best not to get hit by drivers or body-checked by pedestrians.

“Here,” Aisha murmured, stopping in a decrepit doorway and reaching for the feminine bag that held most of their weaponry. “Pooch needs to do exactly what I tell you to do, down to feet placement and speed.”

“You hear that, Pooch?” Clay muttered into the earpiece, standing half in front of Aisha to prevent others from seeing her actions.

“Loud and clear, Clay.”

Aisha came out with a small vial full of brown powder. Uncorking it, she dabbed her finger inside and pressed her coated thumb three times against the doorknob, muttering under her breath. There was a light shimmer that zipped around the edges of the doorframe, almost undetectable, and then Aisha poked Clay in the back.

“Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, facing outwards. Hands relaxed at your sides. What you’re going to do is take one step back with your left foot, eyes closed, and you’re going to remember that whatever you do, you are _no longer the biggest badass in the room_. We clear on that? You are walking into a place where there are creatures that _eat_ humans for meals. Literally. Alright? Don not fucking _speak_ unless I tell you that you may.” Aisha stepped out of his way. “Make sure you are _centered_ in the doorway. Too far one way or too far the other way and you might end up somewhere else.”

Clay was undeniably, one hundred percent terrified out of his fucking wits, but he did as instructed, closed his eyes, and stepped backwards into the doorway.

There was a rush of air, a wild wailing that sounded in his head, and then suddenly his foot hit solid ground. The smells, the heat, the sounds – everything was gone, replaced by completely new smells and sounds. Opening his eyes, Clay realized his back was to the room and turned around immediately.

It was – a bar? A bar, it seemed. Some kind of food establishment, where there were tables and a counter and a bunch of men and women in varying stages of dress (from completely wrapped up to nude). All eyes were on him, and for the most part, it looked no different than any other bar anywhere else.

Until Clay’s eyes caught on a woman with arms that were too long, her neck too long, her ears pointed. Then on a man with an extra pair of arms. A man with no eyes at all. A woman with a long sword and skulls hanging from her belt.

There was a rush of sound behind him and the Aisha was there, pulling off the headscarf and shaking loose her hair. It was up in a ponytail, high on her head, with various beads and bits of bone braided into her hair. At seeing her, most eyes moved away from Clay, but there were a few that lingered, calculating or hungry or suspicious.

“We’ll wait for Lin,” Aisha said briskly, tying the headscarf around her waist and shaking her sleeves out – a clatter came from inside of them, and a few more eyes darted away – “and then we’ll go talk to him.”

Aisha had insisted on clear codenames – Aisha told them to refer to her as Hafsa, Clay was Colonel, Pooch was Lin, Jensen was Hasan, and Cougar was Asad. Clay didn’t ask the reasoning behind the names, just wanted to get in and out, so all he did was nod and wait for the rush of air to happen again.

A couple of minutes later, Pooch was standing beside Clay, doing his best not to look impressed. Since Clay had been trying to do the same thing, and saw the look on Pooch’s face, he realized that they were both failing miserably.

Aisha didn’t seem to notice – she stalked away confidently, leaving them to trail her cautiously through the room. It was more than a little unnerving to see nostrils flare at their scent, to watch creatures lick their lips and study them like insects, and to have Aisha constantly asked why she had dragged in common scum. It appeared, listening to her explanations, that she was claiming them as current thralls to help her on a job. Near enough to the truth as one could get, Clay figured, and he certainly wasn’t going to correct her even if he wasn’t positive he enjoyed the implications of what being a thrall meant.

Leading them to the back of the room, where three doors sat inconspicuously against the wall, she jerked her chin at the far right one. “Inside,” she instructed, and Pooch went first, eyes darting to the left and right, before Aisha followed and Clay brought up the rear.

It was an ordinary enough room, made to look like a sitting room, with various paintings depicting different places on the wall. She pointed them to a couch and sighed. “You can talk if you want to,” she said. “In this room, no one can hear unless they’re physically standing in the room. It’s a deadspace – those paintings lead to different hollows. We’re waiting for him to show up.”

“What’s a thrall?” Pooch asked immediately.

Aisha smiled, a bit bitterly. “That would be what you snagged on, wouldn’t it?” she sighed. “Thrall indicates a human servant that I’m feeding off of. Witches and warlocks and vampires are identical in that respect. If it was another supernatural creature – say, a siren, or a demicorn – a thrall is a derogatory term for a companion, normally human but not always. And if it’s any other supernatural creature, thrall is an insult.”

“So we’re your human servants?”

“In this world, yeah. In the normal world? I would say so. I am bankrolling your merry band of idiots, aren’t I? You’re bait to distract Max while I kill him. If I hadn’t been wrapped up in healing _your man_ , I might have been able to put a stop to Max right then and there.” Aisha pulled a long knife out of her sleeve and an oiling cloth from her belt.

Clay wasn’t going to touch that at all – in part because it might be true, for all he knew – but Pooch snorted. “If you really thought you had a chance in hell against him at the time, you would’ve dropped Cougar’s ass and gone after Max, no matter what Clay told you to do.”

“Clay didn’t tell me shit,” Aisha said archly. “Cougar dug his claws in and made it clear I wasn’t to follow Clay.”

Letting out a sigh, Clay shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I know what he looks like, we’ve tracked him down once, and the only edge we have is that guys from your side of the world apparently have no idea how to blend in with the rest of us normal humans, so he shouldn’t be that difficult to track down, especially if he doesn’t trust humans enough to cover his tracks the way a human would.” Itching at the wraparound turban, he looked over at Aisha. “We’re sure that he doesn’t know how to cover his tracks in the human world?”

“Jensen has come closer to sniffing around his plots than I have, and Jensen’s only been at it for about a year,” Aisha responded grudgingly. “You guys might not have that big of an advantage, but you certainly have a better advantage than I do at the moment. You find him for me and I’ll bring him down.”

Pooch pulled out the tiny vial full of some of the compound that Jensen had assured them was inert in its liquid form. “And this contact, he’s had enough training to look at this and build an antidote? Without, I dunno, making something worse?”

“Why would he want to make it worse?” Aisha said archly. “If this can create ghouls – ghouls are the scourge of our world. It’s a desperate creature that makes a ghoul, because unlike a revenant or a reanimated corpse, it doesn’t obey commands and just feasts until it physically cannot anymore. Sometimes it doesn’t even stop then. No, making ghouls indiscriminately is not in the cards for anyone at all.”

As Clay opened his mouth to point out that there were lots of motivations for leaving those creatures in the world, one of the paintings began to glow.

Aisha made a motion for them to remain silent as she stood at attention, squaring her shoulders and – nervously fixing her hair?

Pooch noticed it too, and while Clay had already had it explained to him that Aisha’s beads and bones were each a captured spell, it wasn’t the settling of hair she had done in front of the outer room, where it was clear she was doing it as an intimidation tactic. No, this was a smoothing back of hair and a preening motion if he could ever ascribe such a thing to Aisha.

The portrait blinked once, twice, and then there was a tall man standing in the middle of the room, clearly of Middle East origin, lean body roped with chains and tattoos, with thick, curly black hair shot with strands of silver and a genial, almost unctuous smile.

Clay hated him on the spot.

“Ah, Ayooshi, how you have grown!” he gushed, accent thick as he wrapped arms around her shoulders and hugged her tight.

She hugged him back – an oddity in and of itself – and then stepped back to gesture to Pooch and Clay. “These are two of the men who are going to help me bring down Max.”

At that, the man frowned. “You know I have told you to leave the Old One alone, Aisha; why must you continuously poke at the hornet’s nest?”

“You know why,” she responded, a bit sharply, and then she turned to them. “This is—” She hesitated, eyeing them a moment, and then hefted one shoulder. “Colonel, and Lin.”

“Thralls?” the man said, sniffing down his nose. “You are above that. You are a battle witch, Aisha, not—” he paused, and narrowed his eyes at them, hands glowing a soft gold. “These are not thralls. You have not bound them.”

“They work with me because they want to get Max as much as I do. They are not thralls, but they are twisted up in our world because Max is buying weapons and potions and administering them to humans. We need you to look at a sample of the potion he almost unleashed on the human population.” She stepped up, looking ready to place herself between the man and them, but it was unnecessary as the man let out a sigh and stood down.

“Aisha?” Clay grunted, because this guy knew Aisha’s name even after Aisha had told them not to refer to her except by Hafsa, and had given their codenames to this man.

She blinked at him a moment and then realized what Clay was asking. “Ah. Where are my manners? Colonel and Lin, this is Fahd.”

The man smiled broadly. “Where is this potion, then?”


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 145k! And almost done with NaNoWriMo, and final projects are here, and I think I've hit that point in the semester where I'm not caring about anything because if I cared I'd freak out and have a break-down of some kind.
> 
> Google Maps are the best thing to ever happen for me. I can zoom in on a lot of places in the world and get a feel for the terrain. Culture is still out of my grasp, but I'll just have minimal outside interactions and focus on the main players.
> 
> Thank you all for sticking with me through this, and for your lovely comments! If you don't understand why something's happening, or something seems to contradict something I've said before, let me know - I'll do my best to either explain motivations of characters (if that isn't part of the plot) or correct the mistake!

Cougar was going to _kill_ Jensen.

The other man – or, _horse_ , he should say at the moment – chewed placidly at the rope bridle in his mouth.

“ _Estupido burro_ , why do you think this is good idea?!” Cougar snarled, losing grasp on the English language with his anger. “I told you no, _mierda_ , you, you—”

Jensen took a step forward and butted his head against Cougar’s shoulder.

“No, _no_ , you—” Cougar spat out a long stream of Spanish, shoving Jensen’s head back.

Jensen made big puppy eyes at him and snuffled at his hand.

Cougar cursed long and hard, pulling his hand away and stalking into the field. The weather was nice – the only upside to all this. Jensen had secured what they’d needed, gotten into the army database to look up the specifics of the Procedure, and they were all set to leave the area, get two or three states away from here.

And then Jensen went and pulled this shit.

Cougar had to admit, Jensen had been very contrite and careful around Cougar. Cougar had taken just as great pleasure taking advantage of Jensen’s carefulness and dragged Jensen out here last night and put the tech through a grueling sparring session. It was the sparring session that had let Jensen know that he was forgiven – a song and dance established long ago on how to apologize and how to accept the apology without actually verbalizing anything at all.

So apparently, Jensen thought this was the smart way to test out whether they actually had trackers in their blood or not.

Jensen had insisted on stopping in this field before they left the state. They were perhaps ten miles out from the Aberdeen Proving Ground, where there were at least three Procedurals in residence at the moment. Jensen had then proceeded to strip down and transform with the brilliant idea of having Cougar pose as someone whose trailer had broken down and their horse had escaped. Meanwhile, Jensen would _waltz right up to the training grounds and see if anyone noticed he wasn’t a real horse_.

Of all the stupid, crazy, _dangerous_ Jensen-plans, this one took the cake.

Never mind that Cougar didn’t have another surefire way to check if they had trackers in their blood. Never mind that Cougar hadn’t thought up something different to dissuade Jensen. This plan was _dangerous_ and if they did have trackers, well, first, Jensen had already alerted them to his presence and second, Jensen being recaptured by the army wasn’t even a death sentence – it was a sentence to a life in the lab, cut open and dissected and treated like he was subhuman. It was _too fucking dangerous_ and Jensen just didn’t comprehend that _at all_.

Jensen snorted and shook his mane at him.

“No. _No._ You are getting in the trailer, you are going to go _willingly_ , and we will leave here before they come looking for you,” Cougar said, trying to control his voice.

Jensen huffed and stepped up to Cougar, curving his neck around so he could hug Cougar, nose tucked against the back of Jensen’s neck.

“You do not have to prove yourself to me like this,” Cougar whispered, and he was ashamed to realize his voice was shaking. “No, Jensen. We need you. I need you. This is not a safe risk. This is not _safe_. Please, Jensen, let’s _leave_.”

Jensen breathed out, soft, and tilted his head so his big black eyes could meet Cougar’s squarely.

Cougar licked his lips, twisting his fingers in Jensen’s mane, and let out a choked sigh. “You – if you die, or get taken, there is nowhere they will take you that I will not find you.”

Jensen bobbed his head solemnly.

***

Cougar watched from afar, squirreled away in a tree with a scope pressed to his eye (the trailer farther down the road, to lend credence to the cover story that the trailer broke down and Cougar was fixing it), as Jensen trotted up to the gate. The two guards there blinked at the horse and stared in surprise as this stocky, short horse stopped in front of them and neighed.

After some conferring between them, one of them disappeared into the compound and came back out with a wide pan. Full of water, if Cougar judged right.

Jensen, of course acting like he really was a horse, went up eagerly and began drinking from the tin as the second guard wrapped a cord around Jensen’s neck and tugged.

Jensen snorted, planting his feet and drinking greedily from the pan.

The two guards shared a look, and then the one with the pan began to walk backwards into the compound. Jensen snorted again, and followed the water.

They got Jensen into the courtyard area, and Cougar watched carefully for any sign, anything at all, that could potentially mean that they had discovered Jensen was a Procedural and that Jensen needed rescuing. Still, it didn’t seem like they noticed, or knew. They tied him to a bike post and left him there with the water.

Moments later, a huge, muscular man came out of one of the buildings with two men in tow. The muscular man was stripping.

_Shit_ , Cougar thought, lining up the shot and breathing in deep. If it came down to it, he’d kill the Procedurals. Jensen could break free from that tiny rope and make his way out as long as the Procedurals were out of the picture.

The bigger man’s body began to twist – jerkily, though. A new Procedural? Perhaps they’d started up the waves again. Or maybe the Procedural just never learned adequate control, which would explain why he was here instead of out in the field. Or perhaps his team was on rest and he was recovering from injuries.

Thinking up backstories and reasons for why the man was in the compound was not Cougar’s job; that was Jensen’s specialty. Right now, he kept his gun trained on the lion that prowled towards the horse.

Jensen screamed in fear, and the sound caught Cougar around the throat and he nearly squeezed off a shot just because of the sheer panic in Jensen’s voice. The rope snapped, and Jensen was off, running wildly away from the lion and deeper into the compound.

The lion stopped in confusion, pausing in his movements, and the other two men – one of which had been stripping down like the lion-man had done – stopped themselves. Men appeared in windows and came out of doors to stare as Jensen tore like a mad thing past buildings and cars.

Cougar understood it was part of the act – a normal horse certainly wouldn’t be placid and calm if a large predator appeared out of literally nowhere – but his heart was still pumping madly and he was fighting the change. It sounded like Jensen truly was terrified, in need of help, and it took a lot of convincing to keep his animal side quiescent.

Eventually, two men located long enough pieces of rope to try and lasso Jensen, but Jensen was on the range now, acting skittish and nervous, refusing to let anyone come near. Cougar watched a little while longer as they chased Jensen around the field, trying unsuccessfully to recapture him, and when he was satisfied that no one had caught Jensen out as a Procedural, he made his way down from the tree and, folding his own clothes and placing them in a bag, he transformed into his cougar form, picked the bag up in his mouth, and ran as fast as he could towards the nearest town.

There, he transformed back and changed into his clothes, and walked the rest of the way to a gas station to complete the ruse of ‘trailer broke down’ for anyone who bothered to look into the story. Once he got the gas container and filled it with gasoline, he walked the rest of the way to the trailer, put the gas into the truck, got into the trailer to change into his costume, closed the trailer, and drove to the base.

At the base, now dressed in working clothes and worn-out boots, holding himself submissively, cowboy hat hidden in the truck, he got out and nervously addressed the guards in Spanish. They couldn’t speak it, which helped a lot more to add to his persona. In halting English, he explained that the truck had run out of gas, but his horse had gotten free from where he’d tied it and he was looking for it – had they seen it? Interspersing his words with Spanish phrases, halting looks, and nervous ducks of the head, he played the ignorant rube and watched as their posture relaxed.

After a couple of minutes, they invited him in (with an escort, of course) and took him to the field where Jensen was still, apparently, evading capture. Cougar turned to the men and asked (again, haltingly) if they had an apple anywhere.

Minutes later, apple in hand, he approached Jensen, making soothing noises. Jensen stood still, trembling, and for a minute Cougar met those eyes and realized Jensen wasn’t acting so much as letting his horse take over. Growling at Jensen wouldn’t help; instead, he kept his voice soothing and approached slowly, letting Jensen smell him well before Cougar got close enough to touch. It took a while even then, Jensen’s nostrils flaring and twitches running through his body, before he approached to lip at the apple. Cougar brought his hand up to Jensen’s neck, patted his shoulder, and then turned to the soldiers, asking in stilted English for some rope.

The soldiers joked with him, teased him about losing his horse, complimented him on having such a fast horse, but none of them approached Jensen while Cougar slid the loop of rope around Jensen’s neck, and Jensen sidled away from the soldiers whenever they got too close. It grated on Cougar’s nerves to play not only the bumbling farmer but be unable to treat Jensen as if he really was a person, and he kept edging to the compound’s exit, smiling weakly and indicating he needed to leave as often as possible. Finally, Cougar was leading Jensen out, taking him into the trailer, and removing the rope. In moments he was in the driver’s seat and taking off, leaving the training ground far behind – and he drove without stopping, trying to calm himself down as well as give Jensen some time to calm down.

It wasn’t until he was half the state away that he pulled to the side of the road and got out, went into the back. Jensen was sitting cross-legged, loose sweat pants low on his hips, eyes distant.

“What the hell happened in there, Jensen?” Cougar growled.

Jensen smiled weakly. “I was – startled?”

“You lost yourself to the horse again. Is it getting easier to fall into it? Are you slipping? Should I be monitoring your other form now?” Cougar snarled, frustrated and trying to understand Jensen’s erratic behavior.

Jensen hefted one shoulder defensively. “I just – I thought I could handle what they threw at me, and I didn’t handle something all that well.”

Cougar looked – really looked – at Jensen and frowned. “Are you – alright?” he asked, worry starting to color his voice, because Jensen was shaky and more pale than usual. “What did they do?”

“I—” Jensen stopped, swallowed hard. “I had to pretend I was nothing more than a horse, to see if their trackers or whatever alerted them to the fact that I wasn’t a real horse. So – I guess one of them got clever, and offered me food, and I couldn’t refuse it because a real horse wouldn’t have, and he just, he fed me something that, that horses aren’t supposed to eat.” He smiled, but his eyes were hollow. “It – I just – I’m just trying to let it leave my body. It doesn’t affect me as much in my human form, after all.”

Cougar cursed under his breath and went over to Jensen’s side. “What do you need, _mi amado_?” he asked, running a hand over Jensen’s shoulder and cupping the back of Jensen’s head, rubbing his thumb in soothing, circular motions. “Hospital?”

“No, I should – it should go through my system soon enough,” Jensen mumbled. “It just – hurts.” He cleared his throat painfully and laughed slightly. “They didn’t bother to pull out a tracker, any kind of electronic implement, nothing. Just some jimsonweed mixed into the grass they fed me, and I had to eat it otherwise they’d recognize that _I_ recognized it. Horses get sick from it all the time. Must have found some growing. Least it wasn’t a more poisonous weed…” Swallowing hard, Jensen shook his head and leaned his head a bit against Cougar’s hand. “Just induces – hallucinations in humans. But sickness in horses. And I just – it’s, uh – not that bad anymore.” He cleared his throat and Cougar decided that it was time to get Jensen up and get him into the backseat of the truck where he could lie down comfortably.

With a soft sigh, he took Jensen’s arm and rubbed his upper arm soothingly. “Come, _mi amado_ ,” he murmured, projecting reassurance and warmth in his voice. “Let’s get you somewhere warm where you can lie down. And throw up outside the window.”

It took a bit of maneuvering, but soon enough Cougar had Jensen in the cabin of the truck and lying down in the back, taking one of the thick blankets and wrapping it around Jensen’s now-shivering form. He hesitated, because poisonous weeds meant hospital care, not waiting it out.

“’M fine, Cougs,” Jensen murmured hoarsely. “Everything’s figured out, we’re in the clear t’ use our forms, an’ I just wanna sleep.”

Cougar sighed. “Then sleep, Jensen.”

***

Cougar and Jensen took separate planes into Cairo International Airport, though they ended up getting back together (with two other students, both of which Jensen had found) to backpack their way through Egypt. It helped that Jensen shaved away his beard (he mourned it) and Cougar took off his hat and stowed it away. Those small changes made them look young enough to be naïve college students taking the summer or semester off and exploring a whole new country. Eventually, the other two students veered off one way and they veered off the other, acting the part as much as possible in public. There weren’t any real obstacles to their progress, and they made it to Port Said and the Ferial Garden in good time. Jensen was certainly feeling much better now, though he had been bit under the weather when they had first touched down and started off, and Cougar had kept a worried eye on him – but generally speaking, everything went without a hitch.

Jensen had been hacking the entire time, making sure that all the leads matched up. Turns out that Max might not actually be in Russia, just a bunch of weapons stockpiling and enough weirdness consistent with the weirdness they’d already seen to suspect that his hand was in it, but there was a lot of property and small islands around Fiji that were in the names of shell companies backed by Goliath. Quite a bit of money and weaponry and scientists were being diverted there, in different shell companies that also traced back to Goliath. Since Goliath was the only real link they had to Max, and since Jensen was operating off of the assumption that Max was at least as technologically stumped as most of this otherworld so he would stick with what he knew (aka, Goliath), Jensen felt it was safe to suspect that Max had plans involving said islands that had to do with building more biological weapons infused with magical shit. When he explained this all out to Cougar in hushed whispers as they bunked in hostels, Cougar just nodded absently, letting Jensen prattle on so that the hacker could work out his nervousness at seeing Pooch again. It wasn’t as if Cougar could give him tips or pointers about statistical probabilities or matrices. Cougar was a more English and history buff than math.

The Ferial Garden was a beautiful square of fountains and greenery in the midst of ramshackle housing squished to the side by grandiose buildings meant for tourists – after all, Port Said was a tourist attraction, a cruise ship port, and there were lots of tourists milling around which helped Cougar and Jensen blend in easier. At the gardens, they stretched out under some shade with some bread and goat cheese, looking no more than picnicking students, and waiting for one of their team to walk by so that they could follow them to wherever their team was holed up. No direct contact, of course – not in broad daylight. They had gone through all this to remain relatively separate and unattached from one another; clumping together as a group would undo all that.

Some twenty minutes or so after the call for the noon prayer, Pooch entered the garden from one side and continued walking through it, talking on a cell phone. Jensen and Cougar had already packed most things up; now, they stowed the rest of it away and stood, casually chatting (so it appeared; Cougar just nodded and made aborted hand gestures, Jensen was reciting trivia about Pokemon) as they copied Pooch’s path out of the gardens and down some streets, winding further and further away from the concentration of the city. Cougar kept his shoulders relaxed even as he grew twitchier and twitchier the further they got away from civilization.

Finally, Pooch turned into a warehouse and Cougar and Jensen followed him inside. They’d already made sure they weren’t followed by anyone from the market place, already done the best they could to not follow Pooch in a direct line, but there was a point where you just had to trust in your preparations. Certainly Jensen didn’t seem overly nervous, and Pooch hadn’t done anything special to hide his path into the building.

Inside, Clay and Aisha were perched on an unmoving conveyer belt, talking softly between each other, and a tall man, about as tall as Jensen, was sitting on a crate with his legs crossed at the knees, tattoos trailing over his body and multiple chains hanging from shoulders and thighs. In his hand he flicked a coin over his knuckles, bored.

Pooch moved to lean against the olive-green jeep, letting out a sigh.

“See, I was just saying, we haven’t hung out in enough creepy warehouses in my lifetime. I mean, the average guy gets to spend about every other month in nothing but a warehouse, I think I’m seriously lacking in that respect, don’t you? I thought so,” Jensen said immediately, spreading his arms wide. “We’ve even got the perfect horror movie cast! The obligatory girl because Hollywood is sexist, an otherwise all-male cast, with one of us the psycho in disguise who will be slowly picking us off one by one, all without our knowledge. My money’s on—” Jensen stopped with a dramatic flourish, and pointed at the stranger.

The man’s eyes narrowed in annoyance, even as Clay grunted, “His name’s Fahd. He’s our healer. You have the compound?”

“That I do, boss!” Jensen said easily, patting the side of his backpack. “We gonna go around the table, or…?”

“We’re waiting for one more person,” Pooch grunted. Jensen’s flinch was almost imperceptible, but present – Cougar held his own fidget under control. Jensen obviously still felt there was something unsolved between him and Pooch, and offering Jensen comfort would have been alright if it was just their team, _maybe_ alright with Aisha present, but with a complete stranger? One who hadn’t said a word yet, who was obviously set apart from the rest of the group, even though Aisha’s body was angled in his direction?

“Who are we waiting for?” Jensen asked, taking half a step towards Clay before stopping and just standing there, not sure where to go. Cougar glanced around, found a crate, and sat down on it, slinging the duffel bag he used as his ‘backpack’ to his side and taking out his gun. Jensen immediately moved over to stand beside Cougar.

There was movement from a side door, and then a veiled woman entered the room, dressed in black and gold, fully covered except for her eyes, which were heavily lined with kohl and looked both infinitely old and extremely young at once. Behind her were two shorter women, also fully veiled though they were dressed in brown and green, with turquoise embroidery around their sleeves. One was noticeably heavier, and the other just a little bit slighter and definitely less voluptuous, and both were obviously subservient to the tall, curvaceous woman who strode confidently into the middle of the floor.

“You will not be in this city long,” the woman stated flatly. “Already there is an upswing in markets I would rather not remain active. Where the Battle Witches go, so goes the War.”

“Wa uhibooki aydden,” Aisha drawled, hopping off the conveyer belt and throwing her shoulders back. “We are ready to leave once you have given us what you have promised us.”

The man – Fahd – on the crate snorted. “I still think this is an unnecessary step,” he murmured, but Clay glowered at him and he stopped talking.

“Catch-up for the rest of the class?” Jensen asked, raising his hand.

After a moment, Pooch sighed. “This is Rhadiyya, and two of her fellow witches. They have information and otherworld ammunition for us, and once we’ve got what we need, they’re going to help us get to Turkey and then into Russia to check out those warehouses.”

“Yeah, about that—” Jensen started, but Cougar nudged his heel with the toe of his cowboy boots and Jensen fell silent.

The woman folded her arms, and the gold lines along the lines of her long dress seemed to shimmer and move. “I have been tracking the Old One for an extended period of time. His constant interference in my land has brought me great trouble. However, this is something that has happened within my land, by him and by foreigners like these dogs you have laid with, many times over. It is something that will continue to happen. My magic and influence will do what it can. I will not extend myself on your behalf for something that will not change anything in the long run.”

“Ma’am, we just want your thoughts on Max’s endgame and what you can tell us about his interactions with the human world. If you have anything of use to us, let us know what we can give you in return for that knowledge or items,” Clay said respectfully.

The woman turned, her veil moving in a wind that Cougar could not feel. “You, Colonel. It is dangerous to give that as your name; it is as much of your identity as your born name. Aisha has failed you in that respect. But you, Colonel, you ask me for this and you come expecting me to help in a region you have decimated and with a foe you only care about because he has harmed _you_. This is not your fight. You have come up against an Old One, and lived. Take your life as gift and leave. This is nothing you are fit to handle.”

“With all respect, ma’am, we defused his bomb and he left instead of staying and facing us. We killed his second-hand man, who Aisha has assured me has been around much longer than the birth of my country. We may not have an advantage in this fight, but we’ve gotten closer than Aisha has. We’ve got a personal investment that will keep us fighting. It can’t hurt you to let us throw our lives away.” Clay folded his arms and held the woman’s gaze a long moment.

Aisha murmured something in Arabic, and the woman snapped at her a moment in the same language before turning to the woman to her left. Obediently, the woman pulled a flash drive out of a hidden pocket and offered up the drive to Rhadiyya. Taking the drive, the lead woman handed it out to Clay, who came up and took it from her gravely.

“What I know, and what we know in general about small sections of his endgame, are there. You must remember, Old Ones do not think in logical, straightforward lines. _None_ of them do.” Cougar couldn’t see her eyes or mouth, but he could tell from her voice that her teeth were bared. “You would do well to remember that, Battle Witch. And you.” She turned to look at the man who raised one elegant eyebrow. “You, Fahd, would do well to remember not to meddle where your nose will get burned.”

She turned to look at the rest of them, letting those sharp eyes trail over Pooch and then Jensen and Cougar. After a moment, she turned to the heavier woman and nodded at her. “Samira will travel with you.”

Aisha, who had taken the drive from Clay and was pulling out a small electronic tablet, jerked her head up with narrowed eyes. “We don’t have the resources to expend on her,” she said sharply.

“She does not need you to do anything for her,” Rhadiyya said, voice bored. “What do you know of shapeshifters, Aisha, to be teaching these humans how to handle themselves? Samira will instruct them. And she will be my eyes here on you, to make sure I know how your affairs end.” For a moment, it looked like she was tired. “Perhaps you will bring an end to the Old One. Perhaps you will be successful. But you will only create a power vacuum that others will rush to fill. It is a cycle and a curse upon our land.”

“The next person who comes along won’t be passing magical substances to the human population. They won’t be trying to mix our worlds,” Jensen interjected. “The next person who comes along to fill that vacuum will be weak and you can manipulate them before they find their feet. This is better for _everyone_.”

Rhadiyya stared at him a long moment before her eyes softened. Looking down at Cougar, she murmured, “Perhaps it is. But for now, I have given you all I can, and you will figure your way out of this mess on your own.”

With that, she turned and left, leaving the short, heavyset woman behind. Aisha glowered at her and immediately turned her back on the veiled woman; Clay looked uncertain but when Aisha grabbed his attention he went willingly, and the man – Fahd – sneered at the woman, who moved serenely to another crate and sat down.

Pooch looked at them, and Cougar looked up at Jensen, and the three of them moved out to the now-dark street.


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Pooch's apology to Jensen. In a manner of speaking. I will make a disclaimer right now - I am a girl. I don't know how men do apologies. Beating up on one another seems to be the stereotype, yeah? That's how Cougar forgave Jensen last chapter and no one complained...
> 
> I am SO FAR BEHIND IT'S NOT FUNNY. I have quite a few projects due starting monday next week and NOTHING'S DONE OH MY GOD THIS IS WHY I SHOULD HAVE GONE FOR A CREATIVE WRITING GRAD DEGREE NOT POLITICAL SCIENCE WHAT EVEN IS MY LIFE.
> 
> Okay. Unloading done. Apologies. Ignore it. Enjoy the chapter, I hope; I have 148k written and I'm almost done the semester, which means semester break and concentrated writing!

Pooch had put up with a bunch of shit since getting Fahd as part of their ‘team.’

First, Clay was thinking with his downstairs brain again. After _everything_ that happened, he was really going to pull that? Looked like he was going to. Pooch wanted to drag Clay aside and rub his nose in the mud. In the scars that twisted Pooch’s legs, even with that magical healing potion of Aisha’s. In the nervous tension that was only _just_ starting to bleed away from Jensen’s frame. In the hyper-vigilant and overly-feral manner that was only _just_ starting to drain out of Cougar’s temperament.

But Clay was wrapped up by Aisha, who was noticeably preening for Fahd, who looked overly smug and who Pooch _did not_ trust in the least. He was a smarmy asshole, and beyond that he had a casual disregard for human life. Not that that seemed to be unique to him; all otherworld races, apparently, completely believed in their superiority.

Pooch had to admit they had advantages, but how great was their advantage when staring down what amounted to a nuclear war?

Because Pooch might not be the strategist, might not be the team leader or the hacker to see how far the waves and implications go, but he damned well knew people. He knew cogs in the machine and could see how pieces fit together. And the pieces of the otherworld did not mesh with pieces of the human world. They were too disparate, too volatile. The otherworld should remain an unspoken world that humans knew nothing about. Max bringing the two worlds together was asking for fear running rampant in the streets – and as much as this world had an advantage, ability-wise, the human world had the advantage of technology, ultimate destruction, and sheer numbers. The battle would be bloody, the hysteria would tear nations apart, and interestingly enough none of the otherworld races seemed to care. Fahd had already hinted in vague ways how having humans subservient to him wasn’t a bad idea, that Max creating a ‘stable’ to feed from was perfectly fine. Aisha never corrected him.

It just – it terrified him, a little, to know that they were sharing the world with creatures that were as close to gods as this world got. That they didn’t _care_ about him. That they had existed as long or longer than the human race, and the fact that they apparently didn’t have any interest in ruling them or subjugating them didn’t make him feel any better.  It was clear, after all, that there were supernatural creatures that actively fed on humans. Maybe all those missing people, all the homeless and the lost and the plain unlucky… Maybe they _were_ subjugating them, like Max, working through human puppets. Maybe after everything Pooch knew, he had to reevaluate every war, every politician and leader and general and corporation.

So this was what Pooch had been living with pretty much for the past four days, waiting for Jensen and Cougar to join up with them. Fahd had looked at the small sample of the chemical compound that Pooch had given him, complaining it wasn’t enough, and Aisha had vacillated between him and Clay in a strange dance that had Pooch wondering whether or not she really had been intimate with Fahd previously. The familiarity was of two lovers, but there were conflicting feelings there – Aisha proving she could handle her own at almost every point, becoming far more stubborn, treating Fahd dismissively, and ignoring Clay’s overtures. It had Clay tied up in knots and was pissing Pooch off himself.

Now, with the new addition to their team, the strangeness and frankly the amount of information that Pooch was lacking, Pooch just wanted to let loose tension in some way. Without Jensen there to set up the secure connection, he couldn’t even watch Jolene on satellite, let alone communicate with her. He wanted to know how she was doing, wanted to be sleeping on the floor because she was still pissed at him, wanted to hear her steady breathing and James’ lighter breathing, wanted…

Just _wanted_.

And it didn’t help that he knew – he _knew_ – he had been unfair to Jensen. Hell, Jensen was a kid that made mistakes like that all the time, and they slapped him on the back of the head, sometimes gave him extra-grueling CAPE, and generally understood there was a level of awkwardness and a lack of social skills that went along with Jensen. But man… Cougar had known, and had kept it from the rest of the team. Cougar had thought that the team wasn’t to be trusted, that _Pooch_ wasn’t to be trusted. And while Pooch knew he’d been overly focused on Jolene and his baby boy, he hadn’t thought their team had degraded to that point. Heck, _Roque’s_ defection had come as a complete surprise, even though looking at it from a distance he could see Roque’s temperament and positions changing.

Jensen was nervously silent as they moved out of the warehouse. The sun had gone down – distantly, Pooch had registered the sunset call to prayer, but it was like background music, now – and the street was still full of children, adolescents, young men and old. No women, though; most women were inside their homes by sunset. Cougar tugged on his vest a little, a battered, dark brown item over the dusty-white long-sleeved shirt. It wasn’t that big of a change from what he normally wore, not that great of a disguise, but the missing cowboy hat actually made a substantial impact on his appearance. Made him look younger, softer. Gentler, in a way. It reminded Pooch that Cougar was actually a younger than Jensen, a fact that the team continuously forgot because Cougar took himself so damn seriously it was easy to forget.

Pooch led the two of them around the side of the building into a narrow alley, towards a rickety staircase that would take them to the third floor above the warehouse, where he had been bunking along with Clay, Aisha, and Fahd. There was room for some sparring there, and it didn’t require using the old elevator that groaned and shuddered and was nothing more than a health hazard. Jensen hung back, letting Cougar go first – Pooch wasn’t certain if that was just because he didn’t want to be too close to Pooch or because Jensen was definitely taller, broader, and heavier than both Cougar and Pooch and worried the stairs were going to collapse.

(To be fair, it was a worry Pooch shared.)

Upstairs, there was a bit of office space, a wide space that had probably been intended as a lobby or showroom or something along those lines. Fahd slept in the office farthest from the street, Pooch in the office closest to the street, Clay slept in the office next to Pooch’s and Aisha had taken the biggest office for herself. Samira would have to be shoved somewhere; maybe with Aisha. Cougar and Jensen would be stuck in the office nearest Fahd. That ought to be interesting.

“Easy time getting here?” Pooch asked, directing Cougar and Jensen to their office-slash-bedroom.

Clearing his throat nervously, Jensen bobbed his head jerkily. “Just – motherfucking sandbox, you know? But yeah, we got through fine, oh, we figured out that we’re not being tracked by something in our blood, not sure if they just told us that to scare us from actually transforming or because they have another type of tracker that’s undetectable to human technology. Tested that out. Found out the effect of jimsonweed on – but that’s not important, no, um, so, Fahd – what’s he like? Seems like a smarmy bastard, frankly, but I’m guessing he’s our healer who’s supposed to design an antidote? He looks human; do a lot of otherworld races look human? I wonder if they have human lifespans—”

Cougar caught Pooch’s eye – he had a wary look, obviously expecting Pooch to still be pissed, but Pooch tried to soften his gaze, show that he’s trying to interrupt Jensen’s nervous babble to offer an olive branch. Cougar got it, of course; being the guy that never spoke much meant he was a lot more sensitive to body language.

“Jensen,” Cougar murmured, and Jensen shut up instantly, looking over at Cougar from where he’d been unpacking his backpack and going through the few boxes of equipment Clay and Pooch had acquired for Jensen’s research from various contacts. Cougar tilted his head towards Pooch, and Jensen slowly turned around.

It was always hella awkward getting through this part, Pooch thought morosely, even as he jerked his head towards the lobby area. “There’s room there to spar. To work off some tension. If you’re in the mood.”

There was a moment when it looked like Jensen seriously considered turning Pooch down, but then he brightened considerably and obligingly put down whatever was in his hand. “Sure thing, Pooch. I suppose having ol’ grump and Aisha and the smarmy bastard around would make anyone itch for something physical. Didn’t want to get into it with Aisha? She’s a scary bitch sometimes. Saying it with all possible respect. A regular BAMF.”

“Jensen.”

Jensen stopped talking and cleared his throat, now that they were in the lobby area. “Yeah?”

Pooch snapped forward with his fist, catching Jensen in his stomach and knocking him back. “Stop talking,” he grunted.

From his position along the wall of the room, Cougar started forward, but Jensen launched himself off the floor and drove into Pooch’s gut. With a grunt, Pooch staggered and lashed out at Jensen’s knee.

In a way, Jensen had been right – Pooch was itching for something violently physical, and Jensen was a convenient target. But this was (as sad to say it) the way that the Losers in general forgave someone; by beating on them senseless until both were panting, on their knees or staggering on their feet or lying on the floor, staring at one another. And while the fight was not particularly short – not the way it could have been, if it had been Pooch and Cougar (they fought too dirty to do anything to get it over and done with in as quickly violent as possible). No, a fight between Pooch and Jensen normally took a while simply because of Jensen’s sheer stamina. He took a lot of hits and kept on coming, and while he was black ops trained and certified, he certainly never took the cheap shots that Pooch was not above ignoring. That was something Roque had never trained out of Jensen, no matter how many times he had taken Jensen to the training grounds. How Jensen stood up against Roque in a training session, Pooch didn’t know – though Roque certainly wasn’t the top Loser at hand-to-hand, when it came down to it, and knowing Roque wanted to put Jensen in his place in those early days, Pooch didn’t know how Jensen had managed to walk back to their housing unit under his own power.

On the peripheral of Pooch’s vision, he could see Cougar circling, eyes flashing gold, but Jensen was giving as good as Pooch was, and when they broke apart, Pooch hunched over and nursing what felt like an impressive shiner, Jensen staggered and limping, Pooch grinned aggressively. “Good,” he panted. “Very good.”

“Yeah?” Jensen returned, just as out of breath. Pooch would have dismissed the question as just something that Jensen said – Jensen babbled inanely often enough, it was easy to discount his small quips and exclamations – but he had been overly harsh with Jensen (even if the kid needed to be reprimanded for what he’d done) and Jensen looked like he needed the grounding.

So Pooch nodded, trying to steady his breathing. “Yeah. Yeah, you overgrown donkey.”

“No dissing the horse, man,” Jensen said, wincing a little as he sat down. Cougar was closer now, and there was relief on his face as he put the tips of his fingers against Jensen’s shoulder. The contact looked too light to get Jensen’s attention, but he tilted his head back, a wide, almost child-like smile on his face and as he beamed up at Cougar he said proudly, “I did good, Cougs. Held my own against Pooch. Getting old, baby-daddy?”

Pooch lifted an eyebrow at Jensen even as Jensen winced. “Okay,” Jensen admitted, “that sounded weird. I’m never saying it again.”

“Thank god,” Pooch grunted. Letting out a long sigh, he took in a deep breath and held it, trying to regulate his breathing.

Cougar snorted, flicking Jensen’s ear before taking a step towards Pooch uncertainly. Which made sense, because yeah, Pooch had been pissed that _Cougar_ had chosen to hide this from them. More pissed at Cougar than with Jensen, to be honest, because while Jensen was older than Cougar by a year or two, Cougar was of higher rank and had served with Pooch for way longer than Jensen had. He’d thought he knew Cougar in and out, and to find that he hadn’t – to find that _Cougar_ , the most loyal of the group, the one who thought about the group first and himself second – that Cougar hadn’t found Pooch trustworthy enough hit him hard.

Of course, as Jolene had been clear to point out before he left Canada, it wasn’t that Cougar didn’t trust Pooch’s mind or character. It’s that he didn’t trust Pooch’s poker face and ability to keep the information from Roque and Clay.

Which. Pooch could understand that.

Now that he’d had time to step back and be objective about it.

So Pooch let out a long sigh and shook his head. “Yeah, you two are a pair of dumbass idiots.”

Jensen’s grin gained sun-like properties, blinding and brilliant, and some tension dissipated from Cougar’s shoulders even as he went over to Pooch’s side and offered Pooch a hand.

“Oughta punch you in the stomach one. Or land another on your nose,” Pooch grumbled, but he took the hand and the support up and sighed – ignoring Cougar’s deep breaths and lowered eyes. Cougar established his equilibrium differently, after all. Jensen, as a horse, wouldn’t rely on scent so much as a hunting cat would, and so Pooch stood still a moment, letting Cougar take in what he needed to confirm his feeling of pack. Or pride. Pride was probably more appropriate to say.

“Aww, who could break Cougar’s nose?” Jensen wheedled. “The eyes alone, Pooch – how can you hurt those puppy eyes and sad face – ow, fuck, ow, Cougs, quit it!”

Cougar picked his foot up off of Jensen’s hand and walked past him to their room, ignoring Jensen’s petulant complaints that Cougar was sleeping with _him_ dammit, why didn’t he help _Jensen_ up off the floor, Pooch was a one-woman man and they knew that. Pooch sighed and gripped the back of Jensen’s shirt, hauling him up, and set him on his feet.

“See, Pooch cares,” Jensen called after Cougar, right around the moment the door opened and Fahd strolled in, staring at Jensen with cool eyes. Jensen clammed up, a hunting wariness appearing in his frame.

“So this is the man we’ve all been waiting for?” Fahd asked, eyeing Jensen as if he was nothing more than a slab of meat. Fahd, being tall, was about the same height as Jensen, though Jensen was more muscled. Still, Pooch wouldn’t like to see an outcome of a fight between the two; after all, Fahd was a magic-user of some kind (healer, though that could mean anything or nothing at all) and he did carry around two knives – and the only reason Pooch wasn’t calling those knives swords was because they weren’t long enough, but they were pretty fucking larger than most knives ever hoped to be.

Jensen slid his eyes over to Pooch, and Cougar stepped back out of the room, eyes narrowed. Pooch let out a sigh and jerked his head at Fahd. “You know he’s our healer. He’s insisted that he can’t find us an antidote to the compound because I have too little of it; he needs more of it to study its effects.”

Jensen’s shoulders tightened and he folded his arms, staring down Fahd, who seemed disinterested entirely – even though Fahd never dropped his gaze, either. Pissing contest or not, Fahd didn’t want to lose it to Jensen. “Why should I hand the compound over to you?”

With a sharp sigh, Fahd curled his upper lip at Jensen and said in an overly patronizing tone, “Aisha has vouched for me. I can offer nothing else but that. Beyond that, no one wants ghouls wandering the streets because ghouls harm everyone, not just humans. Ghouls _eat_ everyone, not just humans. They infect everyone, because it is a magical virus and therefore feeds on magic, which means that there is nothing – no magical cure – that we can use to protect ourselves, only slow it down. So if this is in a compound form and not in a spell form, anything I can do to construct a cure I will.”

“Why don’t I believe that sob story?” Jensen grunted, one eyebrow raised skeptically.

Fahd looked affronted, but Jensen continued before Fahd could say any more, “Aisha’s vouching doesn’t mean shit. She’s not exactly on the top of our ‘to trust’ list. You’re a creepy-ass healer who gives off the vibe that you’d rather be sucking us dry instead of helping us. You say that you have an altruistic reason to manufacture a cure but for all we know you just made that speech up off the top of your head and you really just want to replicate it or let it loose or give us something that looks like a cure but just hides it better in its carriers. Shit, there’s nothing you can say to make us trust you. That’s why I’ve found a few experts of my own and had them give me the rundown, and they have the compound and they’re analyzing it. So you tell us what you find, dickhead, and I’ll check it against what they told me.”

Pooch did his absolute best not to reach up and slap the back of Jensen’s head, because they had just _had_ this problem with Jensen outsourcing and looking for clues and taking it upon himself to do hacks that could reveal themselves to the bad guys – who had he consulted for giving the formula out? Who would know what to do with the formula, and how could they trust that studying it wouldn’t raise flags in the government, flags that could pop up on anyone’s screens? Max could hear about it, or maybe just the average government official would find it and think it’d be a swell idea to develop further, and Pooch gritted his teeth and concentrated on controlling the automatic instinct to cuff Jensen’s ear. Hard.

Fahd narrowed his eyes at Jensen, and then smiled, showing too much teeth. “Well, then. I suppose that’s fair. Though in all fairness I think it’s important to note that you can’t trust anyone, can you? Following that line of logic, you’re in a world where you don’t know the rules and have no idea what the playing field looks like. You’re walking in blind, strolling ahead of your team as if you can control this world, as if you understand anything of what’s going on around you. Sooner or later, you’re going to step on a bomb and it will tear you apart.” Stalking past Jensen, Fahd murmured, quietly enough that Clay and Aisha, who were just entering the door, couldn’t hear, “And I’ll take great pleasure watching you fall into bloodied pieces of yourself. Maybe you’ll even take out the rest of your team, wouldn’t that be fun?”

The vein in Jensen’s throat ticked and Jensen glowered as Fahd disappeared into the room he’d claimed for himself. Clay was walking over, a frown on his face. “Everything alright?” he asked suspiciously.

Before Pooch could say anything, Jensen took his arm and tugged him towards the room given to Cougar and Jensen. “Everything’s fine, just discussing with Pooch some things, let us know when we’re about to leave ‘cause I’mma crash for a while, walking and hitching rides and pretending to live the life of a poor wandering college student really takes it out of you,” Jensen babbled, and then he was tugging Pooch inside and closing the door.

“What the _hell_ , Jensen—” Pooch began, but Jensen shushed him and grabbed out a laptop, flipped it open, and began typing furiously.

[Not talking aloud; don’t know if they can eavesdrop. Yell at me here.]

Pooch glowered at the computer type and roughly elbowed Jensen away, taking the laptop onto his own knees.

[You fuckngi idiot what teh hell was that out there with fahd don’t you know anything at all because funckng hell you don’t go throwing out shit around because that gets you punche in thi nuts repetedyl you better fucking explain yourself befiore I sic clay on you because you know youll deservie it if it happens!]

Cougar leaned over both their shoulders, brow furrowed in confusion before turning to look at Jensen.

Jensen at least had the presence of mind to look guilty as he took the laptop back gingerly from Pooch.

[Dude you’re typing fucking sucks, no wonder you have Jolene handle all that shit. As to what I meant, well, I don’t trust Aisha half as far as I can throw her and I don’t really want to think that Clay’s been]

Jensen stopped typing and then let out a sharp breath. He backspaced quickly and continued, […I don’t trust Aisha half as far as I can throw her so why do you think I would trust any expert she brings in? We’re fighting blind here, you heard Fahd, and we all know it except, I think, Clay. Clay’s old-school, fashioned to think that as long as we give it 110 we’re all gonna be hunky-dory and I just don’t trust it. I don’t]

Again, Jensen paused, and bit his lip before reluctantly continuing, […and I just don’t trust it. I don’t know a lot about this world but I know something. The basics. Cougar knows that my niece has some kinda supernatural guardian of some kind. I used to have a guardian like that, but I]

He stopped, took in a harsh breath and let it go. [I sent it away. I didn’t want it. So I know a few things, but not enough to analyze that compound. But I know that magic has rules just like our world has physics and the magic world has to play by those rules or the magic disappears. There’s a kid I know, was another prodigy like me, went to the same school, I knew he could see things. Do things. I trust him with a lot. He’s the guy I had watching over Em and Raina, because I knew that I couldn’t keep an eye on them like we could keep an eye on Jolene. Too many people would be expecting me to keep an electronic eye on Em and Raina.]

Cougar wedged his shoulder in between Pooch and Jensen, eyes narrowed, and he typed one-handed, [You are sure?]

There was a pause, Jensen staring at those words, before he swallowed roughly. [Positive.]

Cougar hitched his free shoulder in a half-shrug and leaned back.

Pooch looked from between Cougar and Jensen and resisted the urge to bang his head against the table. Yes, he was glad Jensen had someone who trusted him whole-heartedly, who didn’t let him get away with crap, who looked after him. But fuck, it wasn’t as if Pooch understood this. He needed more. Yeah, Jensen trusted this mysterious guy who may or may not be magical, and Cougar apparently thought Jensen’s word was good enough, but that didn’t change a single thing.

[One fucking second okay look I geet that yhou guys are all close enough to just take one anothers word for it but you gotta give em emore than that. You  need tot ell me what you gave him and what happened and why the hell were handing this over to fahd anywahy if you got it alrdey under control??]

Gnawing on his lip, Jensen hesitated a moment, hands hovering over the keyboard before letting out a soft sigh.

[Just in case, you guys, worst case scenario, but his name is Jeffery Williams and he’s currently finishing up his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in the neurosurgery department. Brilliant guy, about as young as Cougar, maybe a year younger. He’s not dealt with things like this but I trust his references. He told me what to look for in a cure, that he’d work on making one himself but that if any expert we get doesn’t mention something on his list, or mentions something not on his list, to be wary and probably not entrust them to make the cure. So. I trust him, okay, and I needed to make sure we’re not getting screwed over by Aisha again, you know she isn’t good for the team, Pooch.]

For a moment, no one took the laptop, Cougar nodding slowly and Jensen watching Pooch carefully. For Pooch’s part, he was trying to take this all in. This was a game of – of espionage, of double-bluffs and blinds and feints. Pooch wasn’t that kind of guy. He let out a heavy sigh and took the laptop again.

[Okay. Fine. You give a little to fahd and well see if he comes up with a cure or not. But I don’t like keeping this theings from clay. We’re a fucking team and we should be fucnking acting like it you know?]

Cougar bumped his shoulder into Pooch’s. “No one says differently,” he murmured, and Jensen smiled, bright and sharp.

“So, that’s done, and there’s other things I need to throw at you, but can you give me the rundown on our new friend and what he’s like, since you’ve been around him for this long?” Jensen asked, leaning back and putting the laptop aside.

“I haven’t,” Pooch grunted. “Barely a day. I know he’s a smarmy-ass motherfucker who hates humans and thinks Aisha’s lowering herself to be associated with us, but that’s nothing new about any of these fucking magic-users, really.”

Jensen licked his lips thoughtfully, tapping lightly on the lid of the laptop before nodding. “Well, I guess I can see that,” he said. “I mean, I knew he was a smart-mouthed fucker just by looking at him, but the whole humans-thing – people who use magic aren’t going to think a lot about people who can’t, right? That makes sense.”

“I don’t trust him,” Pooch said frankly. “Then again, no one really does except Aisha.”

Cougar pulled out his gun and began oiling it, moving through the pieces and taking care of each component. “We will be leaving soon?”

“Yeah, I’d think so,” Jensen answered immediately. “I mean, I still have hacks I’d like to be doing, but for right now I don’t think there’s any reason to stay here and let the moss grow on our asses. At the moment, Max is still hard up because he lost his best man – fuck, what, two weeks ago? Two and a half? From what Aisha mentioned about Wade, he was a pretty important guy to Max. The sooner we can slam him, the less likely it’ll be that he’s found his feet again. We also have to worry because the more time we give him, the more likely it is that he’ll do something. We hit him hard enough that he’s most likely quickened his schedule and stuff, wants to get shit done. I don’t know what his endgame is, other than making money and instigating chaos, but maybe for a guy who’s that old, you really don’t need any other reasons?”

Pooch leaned against the wall and sighed, rolling his eyes. “I think we’re just assuming he’s crazy and we’re leaving it at that,” he said quietly. “But did you get an idea of the procedure? Fahd’s been making noises about it, and Aisha wants to look at it as well.”

“That’s a bit easier to get a hold of; I haven’t sat down and grabbed up the information, but I could do that in an afternoon, say.” Jensen picked up his laptop and pointed a finger at Pooch like a gun. “So, we’re off to Russia, then?”


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no more written. BUT. I do not feel disgusted at myself for this because I AM IN FINALS WEEK AND IT IS ALMOST OVER OH THANK GOD.
> 
> I have a paper due tomorrow (it should write itself, I know where everything's going to go), a take-home final on Thursday that's due Friday (thanks, prof, what was the point of the in-class discussion to change it to Saturday if you were just going to change it back to Thursday?), and one more paper about refining my modeling for the data. IT SOUNDS LIKE A LOT BUT IT'S REALLY NOT. Or, it is, but I shall be done with it all (or 90% done with it, because I am a lazy procrastinator who procrastinates with the worst of them) by Sunday, which means MORE WRITING NEXT WEEK.
> 
> AND AND AND. I am so close to finishing that I am being very hopeful in my projections that by the end of winter break, this will be COMPLETED. ALSO ALSO. Starting the 24th (and you can think of it as a Christmas/holiday gift even though I have no holidays at this time) I WILL BE UPDATING TWICE A WEEK AGAIN. That's right, there will be one update on the 19th, then one on the 24th and one on the 26th, one on the 31st and one on the 1st, and it will continue UNTIL I HAVE POSTED THE WHOLE STORY. Then I will start on the deleted scenes. :D
> 
> So. That outweighs the fact that I haven't written any more, right?
> 
> And there is a LOT of information here in this chapter. If it's too confusing, please let me know! I often don't explain things fully because it makes sense to me but that's because it's in my head and I never actually transfer things to paper...

“Meet the family!”

Roque stepped into the room warily, shoulders tense and balanced on the balls of his feet. He’d been thrown in the deep end of reality, and he wasn’t quite certain he was sane. Or alive, for that matter – this could be hell. Certainly, there were enough creatures to make him question whether he was alive or not. He felt pain, of course, and terror, and a deep-seated fury that made him lose control more than anything else – but you could feel all that in hell, couldn’t you?

There were five men and one woman in the room Max had just entered, and the men were all werewolves, Roque could sense that, but the woman was not. She had an odd enough scent to make Roque distrustful, but that didn’t matter because one of the men stood up – a big guy, black as pitch with golden eyes and layers of muscles. Bodybuilder, it looked like; not someone who had to fight for his life daily. Roque was leaner, a bit shorter, more compact and streamlined than the bull that jerked his head disdainfully at him.

“Who’s this?”

Max walked over to the table the woman was sitting at and ignored them all.

Roque weighed options. He was a fairly new wolf, only recently got control over his other form, and he didn’t want to be here. But Max had said specifically that Roque was to be the alpha, and while Roque didn’t want any of this, he’d rather rule than serve. So he rolled his shoulders and bared his teeth in a mockery of a grin.

“I’m your new leader,” he said.

The other men stirred, obviously upset and unwelcome of this new change, and the person who had spoken first snorted derisively. “You aren’t leader of anything, pup, not until you get a few more years under your belt. Max normally turns the strong ones, not the runts of the litter.”

“You just talk, big guy?” Roque asked, voice bored.

With a growl, the man leapt at Roque supernaturally fast, and just as fast, Roque twisted to the side, grabbed the collar of the man’s shirt, and slammed the man onto the ground. Immediately, he had a knife out of his boot and was stabbing it down into the man’s eye.

The man howled in pain and the other men took half a step back.

“If I say I’m your leader,” Roque snarled, ignoring the whimpers of the man beneath him – they were all werewolves, after all, and it would heal sooner or later, “I’m your fucking leader.”

“Stop making a mess on the floor,” Max drawled without looking up from the item the woman was handling.

Roque stood up, having learned his lesson about obeying Max. The man continued to gasp and moan against the floor, and Max turned, eyes glowing blue in his face and teeth unnaturally white. “Shut up or I’ll finish the job; your blood smells so _good_ from here.”

The man on the floor swallowed hard and crawled to his knees, then pushed himself to his knees, swaying.

“Did you have to make such a mess?”

Roque didn’t answer Max; Max knew the show of force was necessary, Max had _expected_ a show of force, and so excuses wouldn’t do anything at all.

“This is the new wolf that Wade made before he died?” one of the other men asked. He was a wiry Irish guy, flaming red hair and freckled, and Roque kept an eye on that one. This one was built with an eye towards meanness.

Max glanced over at them and sighed. “Must I spell everything out for you? Roque is your leader. He’s my bitch. You’re all a potential food source. When or how or why you were made is of no consequence at all; you’re all mine to do with as I please. Are we all clear on that, now?”

The other wolves looked murderous, but none were insane enough to go up against Max. Roque sneered at them. Max had mentioned – casually – that the reason he’d picked Roque as leader was because Roque was not only powerful enough to protect himself but, since Roque was the last wolf made directly from Wade’s fangs, and Wade was bound to obey Max, that binding passed along to Roque. Had Roque been a wolf for any longer period of time, and that binding - that geis - would begin to fade.

Roque couldn’t _wait_ for the geis to fade.

***

“I’m off to Fiji,” Max said randomly.

Roque looked up from where he’d been sitting in front of a computer, trying to make sense of the garbled mess of notes left behind by Wade. It was obvious neither Max nor Wade were used to dealing with humans in any way, shape, or form – they had turned people left and right without actually making certain the people they picked were in the correct positions to help them. Then again, Max had made it clear that the werewolf virus only rarely transformed humans into werewolves, and the human needed to be extremely aggressive and strong, with enough hint of magical blood or ancestry to make the transition work. Otherwise, you’d just get a dead human (or, if you were lucky, a human that had been mauled badly but not life-threateningly-badly).

But not only was transforming humans difficult, it was seen as a perversion. Most werewolves in general were born werewolves, and looked down upon humanity. (Most supernatural creatures, Roque had come to realize, looked down upon humans as a race in general.) A werewolf who made humans into werewolves was seen as a deviant and was probably going to be put down once fellow werewolves found out. Those ‘fellow’ werewolves would also hunt down and kill any human-werewolves.

Only, from what Roque could understand, no one had touched Wade because Wade was protected by Max and Max was so far above most of the supernatural creatures that no one could touch him, let alone anyone who worked for him. Max was a lot more casual about the humans who worked under him (killing them when the fancy took him, for example) but Max and Wade had been a match made in hell and though Roque wasn’t told a lot about Max’s motivations, he knew that Max was more pissed over the Losers killing Wade than anything else that has happened in a long while.

This plan of Max’s was… erratic, to say the least. It apparently had been spurred by a strong desire to stop skulking around the humans and to just take what Max wanted from life, where he wanted, whenever he wanted. What that amounted to was his own place (country, but who was keeping track?) to live, free from humans in general, while creating enough chaos to keep the rest of the supernatural world busy and not focusing on himself. Apparently, enough supernatural creatures hated Max that Max didn’t want to commit himself to a steady base until he knew he had the ability to create defenses from the rest of the supernatural world. He had witches bound to him, he had elementalists, shapeshifters, a wide assortment of dwarves, but what Max had really been counting on was werewolf shock troops to defend from actual attacks. Apparently, werewolves were very resistant to magic in general and healed quickly; they were pack animals and, ignoring pack infighting, followed their alpha, who in this case would be Max. They were generally exactly what Max wanted from troops and they were everything that human governments wanted in troops as well. So Max had promised the army a more advanced ‘formula’ that would turn their Procedural soldiers into something much, much more deadly.

From what Roque could piece together – and he was no Jensen, so he wasn’t certain how to read all the computer code and make sure he had accurate information, but he was pretty good at putting together the big picture – Max had initially decided to work out of Russia, since Russia was still spread out enough that technology didn’t suffuse every corner. The soldiers weren’t as well trained, but they were aggressive enough. However, there was little to no control; either Wade or Max or both hadn’t realized how erratic the transformation made humans, and more than a few went crazy and ran off, changing people along the way. Max managed to catch most of them, kill most of them, but enough got free to perk up the rest of the supernatural world and make them refocus on Max. Max had moved from Russia and went to Greece, thinking that perhaps Russian soldiers in general were too aggressive and what they needed was moderately aggressive humans. Greek werewolves were apparently no different, only this time they roused the interest of the Middle Eastern supernatural community, which was always highly protective of its borders from the rest of the world. Max had clashed with a strong witch named Rhadiyya, and backed off. Wade had alerted Max that born werewolves were starting to find the turned-werewolves, and so Max had changed tactics and decided to dilute the werewolf magic by messing with shapeshifters and werewolves together.

It had taken a long time – the notes Roque could find were all short, terse, and vague – until one of the turned werewolves still kept close to Wade (though it turned out Wade killed them as often as Max did) mentioned that the werewolf magic was similar to a virus.

And Goliath, manufacturer of biological weapons, came into the picture.

Max had only done cursory background check; Goliath was big, was in the news a lot, was easy to find. Roque would have found smaller companies looking to break into the market and worked with their scientists, instead of Goliath’s – a smaller company would have wanted it more, wouldn’t have tried to mass produce it, wouldn’t question it so much. Then again, no one seemed to have noticed just how many of Goliath’s scientists had died, nor how many of Goliath’s supervisors had disappeared. Wade had changed a few of the supervisors, Max had threatened the CEO, and generally speaking Goliath hadn’t questioned where the new formula came from. Taking werewolf blood and shapeshifter blood, they’d managed to identify by certain proteins in the blood which humans would make the transition (which meant less wasted effort when trying to change someone into a werewolf) and they managed to bond the werewolf blood to shapeshifter blood so that when a soldier was injected with it, it would allow the body to transform into a predator (werewolf blood) but not mess up their mind (shapeshifter blood, or maybe that was what the dilution did – maybe shapeshifters were as crazy-ass as werewolves). It wasn’t supposed to give their bodies a ‘choice’, the way that all the army recruiters said. Whatever the shapeshifter was, that was what was supposed to come out. Wade had harvested vast numbers of predators.

And Jake Jensen was the monkey wrench thrown into the plan.

Wade hadn’t ever harvested a horse shapeshifter. In fact, the injection Jake had gotten had been one of a batch of fifty, all of them chemically identical. The whole batch had been scrapped, but not before two other soldiers had been injected by it – and they’d both turned into German Shepherds.

Roque, of course, had had time to piece all this together because Wade was shit at destroying evidence, and the people under him didn’t think to do it, and Max didn’t care what Roque found out because Max merely had to use the geis if Roque did or said something he didn't like, and then Roque would be in absolute agony.

But when Max mentioned Fiji – Max had been moving a lot of resources out to one of the islands surrounding that. Roque thought that Max was going to unleash some new kind of biological weapon – there’d been something, before, but the Losers had stopped it from activating, taken the dispersion device, and then blew up the plane that had the other dispersion devices on it, all of which had pissed Max off as well – just to test it. Since the Losers had the formula, Max had made the assumption that they were finding an antidote (good assumption, Roque thought privately; that’d been the first thing Clay would have thought of) and had instead modified the biological weapon into something else. Roque didn’t know that part – he was just supposed to keep the werewolves in line, and supposed to keep Max happy by making sure security ran smoothly. He wasn’t part of the research division, where Max was highly invested and paid close attention.

“You’ll be joining me, soon enough. Close down the rest of the factories in Russia; I’m sick and tired of the cold, anyway. Lived in it enough to know I want my own personal paradise with convenient humans to drink dry and play with, and werewolves to drink dry and protect me. Maybe a couple of shapeshifters, to spice things up once in a while. Who knows? Perhaps I’ll just have a stable of all the supernatural races I can get my hands on. Breed them and drink their children dry. Children always taste the sweetest, after all…” Max trailed off, then straightened his suit jacket and smiled that wide, insane smile that had Roque’s blood curdling in his veins. “But! I’m off to Fiji, you’ll be joining me, and we’ll see just how revolutionary this new formula is, and if I’m going to have to find a new head researcher or not.”

Max swirled out of the office, and Roque let out a heavy sigh.

As far as Roque could tell, Max just wanted to watch governments topple, wanted to see the rise of a true ‘eat-or-be-eaten’ society, and he didn’t care how he got there. Everything Max had done had been to edge humans closer to the supernatural, and the supernatural closer to the humans. Eventually, Max wanted to watch the words collide like a kid at a movie theater, for the sheer joy of the chaos. He wanted his own island of calm, of course, he wanted people serving him, but the other steps weren’t necessary. No, Max wanted to stop hiding in the shadows, and he apparently had judged the time right to step out and claim center stage. Whether it was because Max had finally perfected the solution to creating a loyal army, or because Max had enough money, or Max had just been bored, it was happening now.

Rubbing the back of his neck, he finished off the requests Max had ordered him to complete and began to initiate the process of closing down the various factories in different locations scattered across the expanse of Russia. The one he was in, set in a tiny town called Onega, was the biggest and would take the longest to close down. He’d have to oversee a lot of it himself, since this was home to most of the people that Max had captured, and all of them were liable to be unwilling and belligerent. It didn’t help that he kept getting random headaches, spikes of pain that didn’t seem natural but that he didn’t know how to explain and didn’t want to admit to in the first place.

He went to go see the supervisor of the weapons production and start to make plans.


	36. Chapter 36

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gah. Just... gah. Here's my late chapter, and now I want to sleep for a week. x_x

“It is fucking freezing.”

“Shut up, Pooch.”

“He’s right, it’s fucking freezing.”

“Shut up, Jensen.”

Jake huddled closer to Cougar in the back of the van, bundled in a huge coat. Their two guests did _not_ get along well together – Fahd spent most of his time hanging around Aisha, and driving Clay out of his mind, and so Samira had taken to hanging around Cougar.

Which pissed Jake off to no end.

Not that – okay, not that he thought Cougs would cheat or anything, but she was quiet and powerful, and she and Cougar could have entire conversations without saying a word. It grated on Jake, because if they didn’t have privacy before, they _really_ didn’t have any now, and Samira either remained oblivious to how clingy and smothering Jake had become to Cougar or discounted it. It was more likely the latter, simply because Pooch had asked if things were okay between him and Cougar. If _Pooch_ could notice his posturing and overt claiming of Cougar, then surely Samira didn’t miss it. Right?

Thing was, Samira had been working with both Cougar and Jake to refine their other forms. She’d taken for granted that Cougar was a shapeshifter, but had wondered at Jake. Apparently, he didn’t make a good shapeshifter. Not that he cared, much, but. Still. She didn’t have to go swooning over Cougar’s shapeshifting abilities and completely ignore Jake. After all, Jake was _unique_.

He was also, he realized morosely, more than a little jealous.

Cougar wrapped an arm around Jake’s shoulders and Jake stopped shivering a little, if only because he was basking in the fact that Cougar not only reached out and acted like a couple in front of man-eater Samira, but because Cougar really was a lot warmer than Jake. Maybe cats ran hotter.

Haha. Pun.

Samira narrowed her eyes from across the way – the van’s seats ran along the sides, and Jake had spent a long while teasing Pooch that he’d stolen a police van or the Russian equivalent to a SWAT vehicle – and Jake smiled in superiority. Cougar was totally his.

After a few minutes of their intense eye contact, Samira smiled sweetly and asked, “I must say – Jake, you said your name is?”

“Jensen,” Jake growled at her.

“Jensen, my mistake – I must say, you really don’t seem much like a horse. I can’t quite comprehend it. How did it happen?”

Fahd, one of the three sitting on the bench seat in the front (Clay between him and Aisha, who was taking her turn at driving), turned around curiously.

Pooch chuckled a little. “No one knows how it happened,” he laughed. “My money’s on the fact that Jensen’s too contrary to turn into what people expect of him.”

“No, it’s different than that,” Samira murmured, tapping her fingers on her knee – she was still dressed in a long dress, with her face covered, but she always seemed completely in control of the area around her and her presentation at all times, so the tapping had to be calculated for some effect or the other. “I can see two forms when I look at you.”

Jake sat up a bit, interested despite himself. “Two forms? I was told that there were two forms for me, but I don’t know what that means or why it happened.”

“You were a part of this formula?” she asked, nodding at the computer on which he’d shown Fahd and herself the schematics of the Procedural formula, the composition, and the chemical jargon. (The other formula, found in the Easter egg, he’d not trusted to put on any computer except his own, built from scratch, never out of his sight, personal favorite netbook.)

“Yeah, I had it put in me. Cougar had it put in him, too.”

Fahd muttered in Arabic, //It looked like – the science was a bit beyond me, but from what I could tell, that formula looked like something that should have made a werewolf, with something else added in.//

//There are very few creatures in our world that can transform into animals,// Samira murmured back.

Cougar poked Jake in the side, and Jake translated aloud – he had the best Arabic out of all of them, even Clay – only to earn dark looks from Fahd and Samira.

“Didn’t people ever tell you it’s rude to talk in front of others in a way that they can’t understand? Except I can totally understand. I’m sure even Pooch caught some of that; we _have_ served in the Middle East before.” Jake grinned wolfishly at them.

Fahd drew his breath in a sharp gasp, and Aisha half-turned her head. “What is it?” she asked.

“I saw – I think I saw. I am not sure.” Fahd narrowed his eyes at Jake and then looked over at Samira.

She shrugged one shoulder casually. “He was looking at you, not me. And I was not paying attention to him.” Her tone, even accented with the faint hint of sands, sounded dismissive, and Jake tried not to take offense at it. He’d cultivated his persona of goofball in order to not have people suspect his strength, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed it when he didn’t even _have_ to act like one to have people dismiss him.

Or maybe it was just in his body language.

Cougar tapped his side, and Jake twisted his head to look up into Cougar’s face. After a moment, he sighed and hefted one shoulder. “I don’t know, Cougs, I mean – I don’t know how to explain two forms. I didn’t know I _had_ two forms until – well – until someone I trust told me I did. It’s not like I can access it or transform into it anyway.”

“Cut the chatter,” Aisha grunted. “We’re just outside of Severodvinsk.”

Samira promptly turned her attention to Cougar, who remained blissfully unaware of her focus. Jake sighed and sat up, tucking his hands in his armpits.

The cover story was depressingly simple; an academic team looking into the ecosystems of northern Russia along the coastline, looking for the presence of some bacteria or the other. It explained their presence both in Severodvinsk and Onega, Onega being their target. Severodvinsk was just the largest town before Onega and a convenient stop to meet up with a ‘contact’ from Aisha. Jake took that to mean some supernatural creature that would confirm Max’s presence or not.

The little hostel they were camped out in had all the men in one room (plus one random stranger, but then again they weren’t expecting to discuss plans _here_ of all places) and the women were in another room. Fahd kept staring at Jake and finally Jake got tired enough of it that he decided to wander about and find someplace where he could transform without freaking out the locals.

“I’m gonna go wander off and stretch my legs,” Jake offered to Cougar, who was sitting in the communal area with a book. Samira was also there, bundled in a jacket so her unusual way of dressing didn’t stand out too much.

Cougar lifted an eyebrow in query, and Jake smiled widely. “Sure thing. If you want.”

Nodding, Cougar closed the book and retreated to the room to put the book away. Samira watched the interaction quietly before standing up as well.

Jake scowled at her. “You’re not invited,” he said pointedly.

“I didn’t ask if I was. But if we can get in practice than we should. There is little time before we confront the Old One and you must be at your best. If you cannot do more than become beasts – humans like you are always so coarse, in any case – then you have not a hope against him. I am to try and ensure you succeed so that no repercussions fall back on my coven leader for helping you humans, after all.” He couldn’t see her face, but he was sure she was smiling.

Jake opened his mouth to reply, but the owner was watching, and Cougar just came out and looked between the two of them with his brow furrowed. So Jake sighed and simply exited the building, traveling down the street to the wooded forest. He wasn’t certain whether it had been part of a park or it was just uncut trees or the trees were too hard to uproot – it didn’t matter why the woods were there, frankly. Both Jake and Cougar were good enough that they’d be able to tell if people were wandering around, and the practice generally consisted of Samira transforming into a half-lioness, half-human, and kicking the shit out of them. Jake didn’t know how old she was, but apparently all supernatural races had much longer lifespans than humans and compensated for that by having incredibly low birth rates. The family unit was thrown by the wayside, and persons proven fertile were encouraged to procreate with as many as they could, in hopes that more children were the result.

The more Jake learned about the supernatural world, the more he was glad that his mother had left them, even if his father had been an asshole.

Deep enough into the woods, Jake stopped and glanced over at Cougar, who nodded his agreement; this place was safe, at the moment. With a sigh, Jake reached for the zipper on the coat – and stopped.

It was fucking freezing. Before, when they’d practices in Egypt, in Turkey, on the road trip up to Moscow, Jake had gotten used to stripping down in front of Samira (part of his jealousy stemmed from the fact that her eyes did _not_ leave Cougar’s body at all, ever, not _once_ , fucking voyeur) – but there was a difference between stripping down in Egypt in the fall, Turkey in the fall, and Severodvinsk in the fall.

“Um.”

Cougar lifted an eyebrow at him, eyes amused.

“Yeah, this might not have been well thought out,” Jake conceded sheepishly. “I mean, I need the outlet, but I’m not stripping to my birthday suit and transforming.”

Samira rolled her eyes. “Have I ever needed to strip to transform?” she asked them.

“You’re a natural-born shapeshifter and we’re not,” Jake pointed out. “I figured you had some freaky magic that allowed you to remain clothed and transform, and transform back and become clothed.”

She put her hands on her hips and surveyed them. “You may have a point, there,” she murmured. “You are perversions, after all.”

Considering that this wasn’t the first time they called them perversions (or some other variation of abomination), Jake held his tongue and waited.

“Ah. Well. If you’re just going to stand around,” she said philosophically, and she took off her coat and hung it on a branch from a neighboring tree. There was a tingle in the air, something that alerted Jake that she was transforming, and then she stood before them, her clothes as much a part of her form as her golden form.

Her head was a curious mixture of lion and human, muzzle extended from her face but eyes startlingly human in the fur and changed facial features. The ears sat against the side of her head, her nose black and flattened but still faintly human, no hair beyond the fur of the lion running down into the clothes she still wore somehow. Her body grew in size and in weight, a skirt low around flared hips and a tail sprouting from her tailbone above the waistband of the skirt. Beneath the skirt were lion feet, only broader and flatter, with retractable claws, sitting in leather sandals. The shirt was long, almost tunic-length, and the sleeves came down to her wrists, revealing furred arms and human hands tipped with lethal claws. Her chest was curiously flat, lending an androgynous feel to her body. It was both curiously intriguing and horribly repulsive all at one time; it was still a sight Jake wasn’t entirely comfortable with seeing.

She opened that mouth to reveal steak-knives for teeth. “You should still be able to call up your other forms speed and agility, your other forms senses and strengths, in your human forms. If you were natural shapeshifters, of course. Perhaps, because you are mutations, you cannot. But we can test this.”

That was as much warning she gave before she leapt forward, speed and agility and all the fury of a lioness flying at the two of them. Jake and Cougar broke away, Jake pulling out a knife (he always kept _some_ weapon on him, because Cougar had taken to randomly pinning him in the bathroom and kissing him filthily while he felt Jake up, and if Jake didn’t have a concealed weapon Cougar would stop and leave Jake with the _worst_ case of blue balls ever) and Cougar pulling out a fucking _machete_ , where did he even _get_ these things, my god—

She stopped, almost on a dime, and spun on one heel, foot lashing out, claws extending, and Jake dropped low and came up with the knife into her space, but she raked him with claws and then jumped over him as Cougar jerked forward to slash at her from behind.

The rhythm of the fight was never easy, but it was grueling, and Jake found himself reaching deeper and deeper, calling up the feel of wind through his mane and power in his hind legs and hooves as he fought, and he could catch the flicker of gold fur dusting Cougar’s cheeks, those eyes becoming more golden, the hair starting to lighten to gold as Cougar corkscrewed and leapt with all the agility he had in his cougar form.

Claws caught him in his belly and he snapped his teeth forward in a snarl, slashing upwards with the knife and catching her arm. She fell back from both of them and cocked her head oddly.

Since she wasn’t moving, Cougar took a wary step back, putting himself between Jake, who was still on the ground, and her. Jake grimaced – he was bleeding pretty badly, and normally all they had to do was transform from human to animal, or animal to human, to slow the bleeding. Aisha always had some kind of healing potions as well, something that once kept Jake from losing an eye and once kept Cougar’s intestines from spilling into the dust.

“I think I can see it, almost,” she mused. “Fahd, being an expert with the body, with healing magics, with potions, might have a better idea than I. But you have a second form that sometimes overlays your first. Perhaps you were supposed to be one and the formula you showed us forced you into something else.”

“Ah, god, Cougs, I need to transform, help me get the clothes—” Jake grunted.

Cougar hesitated a moment, clearly uncertain about showing Samira his back – she had attacked them before when one or the other was bleeding on the ground – but then knelt by Jake’s side, helping ease him out of the shirt (jackets had been removed when the workout had made them start to feel overheated). Jake wadded the shirt up and pressed it against his abdomen (he didn’t think his intestines were spilling out, but he didn’t want to take the chance) while Cougar yanked off his boots. The air was shockingly cold and Jake began to shudder, teeth chattering.

Then Cougar was dragging down pants and underwear and Jake was curling up, trying to protect genitals and his core from the unrelenting cold that tore into his skin and settled in his very bones.

“Transform,” Cougar snarled. “ _Transform_.”

Jake panted hard, focusing past the pain, and reached for the horse that danced on the edges of his mind. It was easier to slide into it, even though the stretch and slide of flesh and bone felt all the worse because of the wounds that split open his belly.

“Could he have kept the underclothes on?” Samira asked, voice clinical, and Jake snorted and shook his mane. He was as cold or maybe even colder in this form as he was in his human form – the type of horse he was had been native to northern Africa, and the desert. He trembled, and Cougar patted his shoulder lightly and checked under Jake’s belly.

“Cougar.” Her voice was short, and Cougar looked up to stare at her flatly. “Why can he not have kept the underclothes on? Surely they would rip and fall away at the least.”

Cougar shook his head, forced into speaking and obviously not enjoying it. “When we transform, anything touching us – handcuffs, rope, clothing – gets absorbed into our skin. We can only start the shifting process, and let it take its course; you can prevent your skin from rolling and shifting and enveloping your clothing, but we cannot.”

She mulled that over as Cougar came to Jake’s head and patted his nose. “Not completely healed. But better. We need one of those potions.”

Jake sighed in his horse form and tried to think past the unrelenting cold to reach for his human form and slip back into it. After a few moments, his body shivered and he was again on the floor as a human, groaning from the cold and from the wounds that now weren’t gashes but still oozed blood.

“But your feet touch the ground. You transform touching – look, dirt and grass and leaves. Jensen has informed me that he has transformed with a pack around his back and stomach; you mentioned you have transformed with a gun slung around your shoulder and kept the gun. There are rules to be followed, even if you have difficulty comprehending them. And if you can transform with those touching you, should be fine transforming in clothes and simply storing the clothes Elsewhere until you need to transfer back.”

“Can we save the metaphysics lesson for later?” Jake grunted, leaning heavily on Cougar as Cougar helped him get dressed again. “I think permanent damage has been done to my balls.”

Samira lifted an eyebrow at him. “No great loss, then.”

“Ah, excuse me, there is _great_ loss, they are _my_ balls, thank you very much!” Jake snapped at her, pain and the cold making him a lot less amenable to her cutting remarks and dismissal of his person and abilities.

She gave him the stink eye and then transformed back into human form in a whirl of clothing and flesh. With a soft sigh, she hitched one shoulder. “Well. If you really must go rest.”

Cougar ignored her, but Jake did his best not to snip at her that if he hadn’t been able to transform he’d have had to go to a hospital. Instead, he held his tongue and leaned on Cougar as the shorter male helped him make his way back to the hotel.

As they made their way down the street, she turned to Cougar and offered, “Your form is more suited to the cold, would you say? If I can just teach one of you, perhaps you can explain it in simplistic enough terms for the other. We can come back out and continue practicing.”

Cougar squinted at her suspiciously, and Jake wanted to answer for the both of them and tell her _hell_ no – but she was right. They didn’t transform in midair, they transformed touching the ground, and they’d figured out how to have a bag or pack on their back when they transformed. If they could figure out this part of it, they’d have better chances getting out of handcuffs, ropes, and the like. One of them needed to know it.

And Jake _did_ trust Cougar. He just didn’t trust Samira.

“If you want,” he offered to Cougar as they made their way to the hostel and Samira waited downstairs while Cougar helped Jake up the stairs.

Cougar frowned at him. “I know you do not like her.”

“To be quite fair, I don’t like any of them – Aisha, Fahd, or Samira,” Jake answered honestly. “But she’s right that we need to learn about our forms.”

“You need to learn more. They keep mentioning this second form. If you have an advantage you should use it,” Cougar pointed out.

Jake smiled tiredly. “And yet, I’m going to be stuck here for at least another four hours, waiting for Aisha’s magic potion to work on these wounds. That’s four hours of study that you could have. Plus, don’t think I haven’t noticed – you’re wound up, jittery.”

Cougar looked offended and said snippily, “I am not jittery.”

“What would be making me wiggle and fidget and pace doesn’t do the same to you, admittedly, but don’t think I don’t know what your jitter-tells are.”

“Jitter-tells?” Cougar repeated.

Jake frowned at him. “You need to work off more energy. That was barely fifteen minutes of work in the woods; not enough.”

After a moment, Cougar sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “You will not be upset?”

“Nah,” Jake said softly. “You’re mine, and she can’t have you.”

That made Cougar stiffen, and he blinked in shock at Jake.

Jake licked his lips and said slowly, “You… didn’t notice she’s been trying to get in your pants.”

“Truthfully, _mi amado_ , I have paid very little attention to her or Fahd at all,” Cougar replied softly. “But that explains more of your dislike.”

“I trust you. And I know you can handle yourself against her if she turns out to be a double agent or something.” Jake smiled lopsidedly at Cougar, which pulled a reluctant smile from Cougar.

“Well. If you’re sure.” Cougar stood up and patted Jake’s shoulder, then paused. After a brief moment, he bent down and pressed a kiss to Jake’s lips, soft and sweet and agonizingly slow. Jake groaned into it, winding fingers into the long hair, and when Cougar broke it Jake was panting raggedly.

“That,” Jake muttered, “is highly unfair. I’m gonna have to try and kill this boner before Aisha gets in here.”

Cougar laughed softly and ran nails over Jake’s scalp lightly before stepping away from the bed. “We will be moving soon enough. When we are out of tiny shared rooms like these, we will have more time with one another.”

The gleam in Cougar’s eyes was a deliciously dirty promise, and Jake groaned and desperately tried to will away his erection. “Not cool, Cougs.”

Waggling his eyebrows, Cougar slipped out of the room.

Moments later, the door opened and Jake forcefully directed his thoughts to Clay and Aisha and – yeck, there we go, boner not so prominent and dying fast. But it wasn’t Aisha that came in, but Fahd.

“What do you want?” Jake demanded, glowering at the pensive man.

Fahd sat down on the bed opposite to Jake and tapped fingers against his chin. “I have looked through the samples you gave me, of this chemical that creates the _ghul_ and the chemical that has turned you and the quiet one into animals. I was wondering – and this will be prying – but what was your mother?”

Jake swallowed hard and bared his teeth at Fahd, eyes glinting. “You have no reason to be asking me that. Just tell me what the hell those two chemicals are and how to counteract them, and we’re good.”

“Jensen, Jensen… you don’t trust me, I’m sure. Very wise choice – never trust anything in the otherworld. We are masters of illusions and deceit, without ever lying outright. But you must understand that I could care less about you or your pitiful human team. I ask because there _is_ a reason to be asking. What was she? Only two races can sire shapeshifter children, and those are elemental witches and wizards, and shapeshifters themselves. So which one was your mother?”

Growling under his breath, Jake put his head back down and glowered at the underside of the bed above him. He might be in too much pain to get up and thrash Fahd – especially considering he didn’t know what Fahd’s magics _really_ were and he was wary and cautious even if he didn’t show it all that much – but he could always ignore Fahd until he went away. Eventually he’d get tired of being around Jake, after all. He could go chasing after Aisha and wind Clay up some more.

“It could be shapeshifter. It would explain why you have a second form underneath your horse. After all, that chemical you showed me – it was nothing more than werewolf saliva mixed with shapeshifter blood. Still, if your mother was a shapeshifter, you would come from a lineage, and werewolf blood wouldn’t affect you at all because the shapeshifter blood would interact with your shapeshifter heritage. Yet there wasn’t any shapeshifter heritage, was there? Nothing for the shapeshifter blood to latch onto, so the werewolf saliva – infinitely more dangerous, mind you, and they are one of the few races that can force nonmagical creatures to become like them – the saliva held sway.”

Jake was interested despite himself, but refused to grace Fahd with a glance. There was a rustle of movement, and then Fahd continued in his quiet, interested voice, “Perhaps your mother was an elemental witch. It would make more sense. Elemental witches in general are weaker than elemental wizards, and the blood normally takes another generation to pop up when elemental magic-users mate with humans.”

Unable to keep silent any longer, Jake turned his head and narrowed his eyes at Fahd. “How do you know it’s my mother and not my father?”

“The only reason you brought me in is because I am aware of the human world enough that I can tell if any manipulation of blood or chemicals happened with these formulas. If I can do that, do you think I really can’t look up your team? You lived with your father until you were fourteen years old. I can find your father’s tax records, employment records, and when he died he was buried, not burned. All magical creatures, even if they’re living as _humans_ —” Fahd’s voice made it clear that it was beneath magical creatures to live like humans—“are cremated or burned at death, because a necromancer can reanimate anything that has magical blood and bind one’s soul to them.” Fahd smiled, and it was a threatening smile, not a kind one. “So, mother it must be. And probably not a shapeshifter, so more likely an elemental. Which would explain why your second form is as it is, and why, when given werewolf saliva and the blood of a German Shepard shapeshifter, you turned into a horse. You mother was most likely an air elemental witch, was she not? Horses, creatures of the wind, and your second form, a goshawk.”

Ignoring Fahd’s creepiness, Jensen blinked in confusion. “A what?”

“A goshawk. A type of bird.” Fahd waved his hand negligently and looked at the doorway. “I’m sure Aisha wants me kept a safe distance away from her pet humans who will put her in the path of Max again, so I’ll be going. But if you want to learn more about your second form and perhaps practice, just let me know.” He stood up, brushing off the edges of his sweaters and his jeans, and moved to the door just as Aisha walked in.

Aisha raised her eyebrow at him, and he just smirked and moved past her.

“What did he want?” Aisha asked, moving to sit on the edge of Jake’s bed and pull out the vial.

Jake shook his head. “Just – things.”

Now it was Jake’s turn to get an eyebrow raised at him, and she huffed. “Well. Will I have to bring Clay in here to force the answer out of you?”

“No – just. Where did you find this guy? I mean, he’s not exactly the sanest of people.”

“He’s not ‘people’ at all. He’s a wizard, a very powerful one. It’s rare when you can find a wizard who can heal by laying hands on someone. Rarer still to find one that went to medical school in the human world to understand more about the human body. He’s a vicious fighter.” She tapped a finger against the edge of the vial contemplatively, and then lifted up Jake’s shirt to drip the potion into the wounds. “He was my mentor and taught me a lot about how human bodies are put together – and how to take them apart. Don’t underestimate him.”

“Oh, I’m not, you don’t have to worry about that. But why is he throwing in with us? So far no one seems to want to touch Max at all. That witch in Egypt – was she related to you, by the way? – didn’t want anything to do with him. Yet we’ve got a shapeshifter with us, and a – a wizard, and you. You’ve got some hate-hard-on for him, I know, because he ordered your dad killed, but those other two don’t have that excuse or explanation.”

For a long moment, Aisha held his gaze. Then she pushed down his shirt and stood up. “Fahd owes me. And Samira’s only here because Rhadiyya ordered her to follow us. She’s not here for any altruistic reason.”

“Forgive me for saying this,” Jake said bluntly, feeling the familiar tingle as muscles and skin began to knit back together on his abdomen, “but Fahd’s not a nice guy. He’s not just doing this because he owes you. There’s another reason here.”

“Be that as it may, he’s the only one I know who can fashion an antidote for you and Cougar and successfully counteract that formula. So we’re stuck with him and you’re going to have to deal with him in a decent manner eventually.”

Jake watched her stalk away and frowned at the bed above him again.

A goshawk.

Wonder what that looked like?


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Unfortunate, but I caught up with myself. BUT. I am maybe four chapters (maybe five) from completion! I am aiming to update every Monday and Wednesday now. I wrote 3k words today to make certain this chapter was done, and yes, it ends in a cliffhanger, but never fear! I am updating in two days. :D
> 
> Thank you all for your comments and for your continued readership! We're almost to the end!
> 
> Also, Clay's POV is harder now. :(

Clay held the scope to his eye and looked over the warehouse. Jensen had confirmed that this was the warehouse where the weapons were being stockpiled. It looked mainly empty, though – perhaps deserted.

“Movement,” Cougar grunted.

The two of them were on the top of a nearby building, bundled up against the vicious wind that was coming off of the nearby inlet. White Sea, Jensen had mentioned in one of his varied conversations with no one at all. In the gray light of the dawn, it looked far more like a black sea or gray sea, but Clay didn’t care so much where the name came from. What he wanted was to find that sonuvabitch and deal out the justice he deserved.

Preferably without dying.

He put the scope back up to his eye. “Where?” he asked, voice rough.

“Upper window. Office. Think they’re moving out.”

“Well, at least we got to them before they’re completely gone,” Clay sighed. “But if they’re moving out, Max probably isn’t here. No reason to stick around, after all.”

Cougar grunted again and turned his head, binoculars sweeping a small path to the opposite end of the building. “What now?”

And that was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? Clay was asking himself that every step he took now. Why the hell was he getting his men involved in a fight that was older than their country, let alone something they’d been trained to handle? Why was he so upset that Aisha refused to have anything to do with him now that Fahd was around? Why the _hell_ didn’t he just step away? Go live in the Caribbean or something. Get a tan, live a life that wouldn’t end up with him dying before his fiftieth birthday. He had talked shit with Roque before, sharing a watch – what were you going to be doing in five years?

Breathing, Roque had said.

Killing things, Clay had said.

And what did you want to do in five years?, Clay had asked.

Breathing, Roque had responded instantly.

“Boss?”

Rubbing a gloved hand over his face, Clay put down the scope and sighed. “We’ll hit it fast and quiet tonight, send in Jensen. If everyone’s mostly gone, we might not hit a lot of resistance, and ideally we’ll keep it quiet enough that no one notices. In and out, just checking their files, their computers. We need proof that we were set up in Bolivia so that we can go home with our names cleared. You’ll run cover, Pooch has the vehicle. I’ll be with you, running comms.” He pulled the thick coat closer to his body and opened his mouth.

“Don’t think about saying it,” Cougar growled, standing up. Once upright, he kicked Clay in the shin and then opened the roof-access door, making his way down into the marginally warmer storage area. The building was another warehouse, one that was still in use but, considering it was pre-dawn on the weekend, no one was here. Their most recent base was a ways away, in a hotel that took their cash and didn’t ask any questions. The van was parked in the nearby garage, and it was quick work to make their way down from the top floor to the garage without coming across anyone.

In the van, Clay turned on the heater and shoved his hands right up against the vent. Cougar smiled a little but otherwise remained silent, driving over the pitted roads and stopping for pedestrians. After a few minutes, Clay opened his mouth again.

Cougar reached over and cuffed the side of Clay’s head.

“Ow, fuck, Cougar!” Clay growled, glaring at Cougar. “What the hell was that for?!”

“You are going to do what Jensen has done, and tell me my job is done. That I do not need to be here, because there are other things I can be doing with my life. That you do not need me. Perhaps you are going to say all of us need not be here.” Cougar smiled placidly and turned down onto the street of their hotel.

“Look – if we get the proof that we were in Bolivia under orders, our names are cleared. That’s it. There’s nothing more we need to do, really. You can go back and live your lives out as you want to. Pooch has a family, Jensen has a family, and you have Jensen.”

Pulling into a parking space, Cougar put the car in park and turned to stare at Clay accusingly. “And if this is true? So what? Max is still out there. He will be starting up trouble again. From everything we’ve heard and understood, Max is doing something no supernatural creature has done before. They hate humans, hate everything that has anything to do with us. The fact that Max is involving the human world means he has a wider end plan that will necessarily involve us. Beyond that, he knows us, knows Pooch and Jensen and their families. Do you really think that he could not find them? Hurt them?”

Clay scrubbed at his face and grunted under his breath.

Cougar just smiled angelically and exited the van.

“No, look, Cougs—” Clay got out of the van, tucking his hands under his jacket as Cougar grabbed up their gear. “Look, I know – I know that we’ve got two unknowns—”

“Three,” Cougar corrected, hefting the bag with his rifle onto his back and moving to the low slung hotel.

Clay winced a little. “Okay, three,” he agreed. “But – Cougar, look, I know that they don’t have your best interests at heart. I can’t trust myself to look at all angles at once. I don’t want you or anyone to suffer because of them.”

“Then,” Cougar said judiciously, “perhaps you ought to trust _us_.”

Scowling, Clay watched Cougar step into the stairwell that would take them into the main area of the hotel. The plus side about their cover in this was that they weren’t expected to take bad hotels; academics could book great hotels without looking suspicious, after all. Still, it meant they had to plan as if their every move was watched. So Clay couldn’t walk fast after Cougar and ask him to explain himself – he couldn’t draw attention to their group. And by the time he’d gotten up to the room, Cougar was sitting on the double bed next to Jensen, with Pooch sitting in a small chair next to the desk. Fahd was there as well – Aisha and Samira had a different room, of course, and apparently they either hadn’t gravitated over here yet or they were out.

Or, you know. One had killed the other. Clay might be oblivious to a lot of the emotional undercurrents of his team, and had relied on Roque (of all people) to bring problems to his attention, but he had to be deaf and blind to miss that Aisha hated Samira and Samira looked down on everyone except, strangely enough, Cougar.

Jensen was splayed on his stomach on the bed, the laptop on the floor and his head hanging over, and he chattered half to himself, half to Cougar. Clay was pretty sure Jensen was running some extra things along the side, but he had to just trust that Cougar was riding herd on him. Besides, with all the trouble they were already in, Clay sincerely doubted there was anything Jensen could do to make everything _worse_ in any way.

… He should probably take Jensen aside anyway, ask him what was going on.

“We got a plan?” Pooch asked from where he was sitting. He was glowering at Fahd, though Pooch’s default state at the moment appeared to be ‘glowering, moody, and darkly suspicious.’ Clay couldn’t fault him – he had a family to go back to, after all – but he couldn’t be sure if it was Pooch overreacting because of Roque’s betrayal or if there was actually cause for his paranoia.

“Jensen will sneak in tonight, Cougar providing cover. You’re driver, obviously. The mission doesn’t require anything more than that; the warehouse looks like they’re moving out, which means our evidence might already be gone. But I want to cover all the bases, make sure we’re not overlooking anything.”

“They’re probably moving out to the Fiji islands, somewhere there,” Jensen piped up helpfully. “There have been a lot of scientists traveling to that area in the past month or so. I think Max is stepping it up because he’s short his right-hand man and doesn’t want to get caught with his pants down.”

Clay nodded at that, even as Fahd frowned. “The Fiji island chains are protected from outside influences. It seems unlikely a vampire would try to settle down there. We should look for a base, not another warehouse or bolt-hole. We need to track him down before he reconsolidates his power base.”

“Yeah, but unless you can do that, this is the closest I can get to him,” Jensen said, and his voice had an edge that flagged Clay’s attention. “Unless you can whip out some magic tracking device – which would make our job a hell of a lot easier – we’re stuck following the money trail, and this is where it goes.”

Fahd put his hands up in a defensive posture, but even Clay could tell he was a bit too pleased with himself. Smug. Narrowing his eyes, he turned to Pooch and tilted his head towards the door.

For a moment, it looked like Pooch wasn’t going to listen to the silent command, but then Pooch sighed and stood up. “What do you guys need for this to work tonight?”

“Just a car,” Clay grunted. “We’ve got the hardware and Jensen has the tools he needs to bypass security, doesn’t he?”

As Pooch left the room, Jensen gave Clay a thumbs-up. Cougar looked at Jensen a moment before rolling his shoulders and settling himself beside Jensen – putting himself between Fahd and the hacker.

Letting out a soft sigh, Clay exited the hotel room. Down the hall, Pooch was standing at the top of the stairwell, waiting for Clay, and Clay made his way over to Pooch.

“What’s the matter?” Clay asked quietly.

Pooch laughed wryly. “You’ll need to be a bit more specific than that, Clay – there’s a hell of a lot wrong with this scenario that it’s difficult to narrow down.”

Hesitating, Clay weighed what to ask about first, and settled on Jensen first. “Well, I’d like a sit-rep if you can, but I was asking in regards to Jensen and Fahd.”

“Well.” Pooch rubbed the back of his neck and glanced down the hall. “There’s a lot there. First of all, apparently Jensen’s mom was some kind of supernatural or other being, and you know family’s a touchy subject with Jensen.”

Clay winced – Jensen was a fairly laid-back and easy-going guy who would let a lot of things go, who forgave a lot, and who didn’t start fights for the fun of it the way that Roque and even Pooch sometimes would do. Yet mention anything about Jensen’s family structure and he saw red; some of the most inventive and vindictive pranks and attacks Jensen had visited on fellow soldiers had been because of just that thing. “Who bled?” he asked.

“Well.” Pooch swallowed. “That’s the odd thing. No one. Jensen just… let it go. I don’t know what’s going on between the two of them, and I don’t think Cougar knows either – Fahd’s been making weird digs at Jensen, and Samira’s been trying to train Cougar really hard but been ignoring Jensen, and all in all I really don’t think we need the extras. It’s hard enough trying to deal with this world with just Aisha and Max; Fahd and Samira have their own agendas and they aren’t going to fight with us. We can’t even guarantee that they’re going to fight against us when it comes down to it.”

Folding his arms, Clay grunted. “I don’t like Samira here, I’ll grant you that, but we need Fahd for that formula. He’s creating an antidote.”

“He doesn’t have to do that with _us_ ,” Pooch pointed out. “He can be somewhere else. Look, I get that Aisha vouches for him and all that, but Fahd isn’t _necessary_.”

With a sigh, Clay leaned against the wall and rubbed at his beard. “I can try and talk to Aisha, but we’re not paying for him to come along – he’s doing that himself. And he can do other things, too. We have nothing that can go against the supernatural creatures we’re going to be facing. He and Aisha and even Samira can hold the line while we get our evidence to clear our names.”

Pooch gave Clay a flat stare, one that made Clay feel uncomfortably close to squirming. “I get you want personal revenge on Max, okay? We all get it. Hell, Cougar and Jensen agree. But I think you’re leaving too many holes in our defense. You’re not asking the questions of these two that you could be. That you should be, maybe.”

“Is that another thing that’s wrong?” Clay asked.

Heaving a sigh, Pooch nodded. “There’s tension between Cougar and Jensen because Fahd keeps pulling Jensen aside, and Samira’s pulling Cougar aside. Then you have tension between you and Fahd – because yes, we all see your jealous caveman routine. There’s tension between Samira and Aisha, between Samira and Fahd. And there’s the fact that Cougar’s overextending himself because he keeps trying to calm Jensen down, but Jensen’s not able or not noticing that Cougar needs the same.”

“That’s… quite a laundry list.”

“Yeah, it is. But you asked. And Roque—” Pooch paused, swallowed, and then soldiered on. “Roque could make you stop and look at it, or he used to, before Bolivia. But he could also pick at Jensen until Jensen noticed, and he could – he had a way to cut through the bullshit, and you know it.”

Clay sighed and rubbed the back of his neck again. “That’s all – none of that can be fixed, really. I can’t do anything for that.”

“You kick out Fahd and Samira, that gets rid of quite a bit,” Pooch said bluntly.

“They’re a tactical advantage,” Clay pointed out, but he knew it was a weak argument. “I can’t tell Aisha we won’t need them, because if she brought them along then I have to assume that they’re necessary, eventually. I don’t know this world enough, Pooch, and I need some expert to make sure you guys come through intact. Alive. I have to trust that Aisha isn’t doing something that would damage the team, because that would damage her chances.”

Pooch shook his head and moved to start walking down the stairs. “She’s a scared kid hurting, Clay. Her dad’s been killed because of his association with Max – and because of you, if you remember. That can easily transfer to our team. There’s no way to say it hasn’t transferred already.”

With that, Pooch walked down the stairs, leaving Clay standing at the top.

***

Clay sat on the bed, watching as Cougar cleaned and oiled his gun for most likely the fifth or sixth time. Jensen had migrated to the chair Pooch had been in, two laptops in front of him, a pen sticking out of his mouth and eyes focused solely on the screens before him. Fahd had just left a few minutes ago – Clay wondered absently where he went, but for right now it meant that he could speak to Cougar without Fahd hearing. Hell, probably without Jensen hearing, either – as much as Jensen was a trained soldier, who (in the field) could pay attention to his environment if he had to, in an environment he felt safe he lost himself completely in the electronics of his computers.

“You alright, Cougar?” Clay asked.

Cougar lifted an eyebrow at Clay.

“Well. I’m trying, you know.”

Cougar snorted slightly and looked back down at the gun in his hands. “I do not like Fahd, Clay,” he said simply.

“Yeah, I’ve been getting that,” Clay sighed. Leaning back, he inclined his head towards Jensen. “You two doing okay? Holding out okay?”

Concern appeared in the back of his eyes, but Cougar lifted one shoulder dismissively. “We will hold.”

“Jensen got tonight planned out?”

Cougar inclined his head. “Not now. But yes.”

Clay looked back over at Jensen. “Then what’s he doing now?”

A fond look came across Cougar’s face, and his fingers slowed in the familiar task. “He is trying to make connections, again.” For a moment, Cougar hesitated, and then he lifted a shoulder again. “He says he knew someone who is – like Aisha, and Fahd and Samira. That he trusts that person, even though they cannot do what Fahd can do, and so he is using that to make sure Fahd does not double-cross us on the antidote.”

“That’s good, at least,” Clay murmured. For a while, they sat in silence, and then Cougar snorted.

“What?” Clay asked.

“Just – thinking. Pooch is so certain that we are at the mercy of these stronger, supernatural beings. But yet they have never outright attacked humanity. They have never said they wanted to. Perhaps they are more leery of us than we realize.”

That was an intriguing thought, one that Clay couldn’t justify but would dearly like to be true. “If you’re right, it means there’s a lever humans have against them, somewhere. We just need to find it.”

“Mmm,” Cougar murmured, even as the door opened and Pooch stepped in.

“I’ve got a car. We ready to do this?”

***

Inside the van that Pooch appropriated for their uses, Clay leaned against the wall and watched the screens of the four laptops Jensen had set up. With him was his small netbook and a variety of other gadgets – Jensen had made it clear that if he couldn’t get through the security and firewall with those items, he couldn’t do it at all. From the outside, he couldn’t get onto the servers of the computers, let alone figure out if there were any paper files, but he could piggyback onto the security cameras’ frequency and let those inside the van see what was happening.

Cougar was up high on a nearby building, moving as Jensen did, keeping the office areas in his sight. Jensen had already scaled the fence and slipped in, a backpack tight against his back with all his tools.

_“This is Eagle, over.”_

Clay picked up the radio and clicked the button. “Reading you, Eagle, what’s your situation?”

_“Inside. Fairly deserted. Most downstairs; an assembly line format. Looks like bio weapons, maybe, but I’m only looking at hazardous waste. Haven’t seen any security.”_

“You in position, Cover?”

A grunt told Clay that Cougar was ready and waiting.

“Alright, regular updates, you know the drill—”

“What the _fuck_?!”

Clay whipped his head around to Pooch. “What’s wrong?”

“I woulda sworn that I just saw Roque,” Pooch muttered, voice weak. “I dunno, Boss, I—”

_“Shit, shit, shit, Cover!”_

There was the muffled sound of a flash suppressor, and one of the windows shattered.

“Eagle, you have what you need?” Clay demanded.

_“Fuck, Boss, you think I had time to get anything at all? They were on my tail faster than—motherfucker, scents, sound, are those senses better for werewolves than normal humans? If they’re in human form?”_

That was something they should have planned for, something they should have asked—and that was information Aisha should have volunteered, if she’d known. Clay turned to look at her.

“I didn’t think we’d run into any werewolves here,” she said tightly. “I was fairly certain that Max would keep all the werewolves close. Without their alpha, they’re going to fight his control every step of the way – out here like this, they’re not going to obey him. There’s no reason to. Werewolves hate vampires, and vampires despise werewolves. It’s one of the oldest feuds in our world, back to the origin of many of our races. Now that Wade is dead, I thought his hold over the wolves to be ended.”

As she talked, Clay was sliding a magazine into his gun, grabbing clips and stashing them on his person. Aisha had said that there were certain metals that could hurt supernatural creatures, but she hadn’t given them any bullets or even knives – and their dealer had the knives and machetes on the way but they had nothing on them at the moment. Even with Cougar setting up suppressive fire, he couldn’t kill the creatures and Jensen was still stuck there.

Jumping out of the back of the van, he looked over at Aisha, an eyebrow raised. “You realize,” he said, voice flat and cold, “I can’t help you without my team. They’re all important to our success. I’d hate if this is a deliberate attempt on their lives.”

Aisha curled her lip at him and followed him out the back. “Come, Samira, earn your keep.”

The veiled woman inclined her head, and though her face was covered it was obvious that she was smiling. “Of course,” she said.

Then they were moving fast to the fence, Samira already changing into a lioness that was at least twice the size of a natural lioness, and Aisha reached into a pouch and pulled out a pinch of powder. Her lips moved silently, eyes concentrated, and then she threw the powder out, creating an explosion that leveled the fence in front of them.

Clay was through first, moving into the warehouse as quickly as he could, following the noise of confrontation. Beside him, Aisha pulled out a knife from her thigh, one that was almost as long as her forearm, and they both ascended the stairs, the lioness prowling behind them.

On the second floor, there were still assembly lines, crates, boxes, but overall the warehouse seemed relatively empty. It was clearly designed to store a lot of things – Clay had vaguely noticed the barrels of ‘hazardous waste’ on the first floor as they ran to the stairs – and it was just as clearly in the process of being emptied.

Furious snarling and howls sounded up ahead, and the lioness surged past Clay and Aisha, leaping and scrambling faster than either of them could go.

They turned a corner and came to the southern side of the building, where the main offices were located, all in a line, on one side of the hallway, while windows were on the other side of the hallway. As of right now, the windows had small holes in it – Cougar, providing cover. There were three furred wolves in the hallway, but none of them were horse size like Wade had been. Immediately, Clay emptied his gun into the nearest wolf.

It turned around, long muzzle dripping with saliva and eyes mad, and leapt.

Aisha strode forward and slashed at the wolf’s neck, a blow that the wolf didn’t try to dodge, before dropping down onto one knee to let the wolf go over her head. Clay slammed another magazine home and emptied it again into wolf—

And the wolf didn’t get up.

Aisha blinked in surprise, and Clay kicked savagely at the body to roll it over. The wolf’s throat was cut open to bone, and was not healing – after all, Aisha had her own knives that were pure metal, while Clay was still waiting for his weapons to come in.

But they didn’t have time to ponder the strangeness of the kill; Jensen howled in pain, and there were three crashes – bullets, plowing through the glass. Clay surged past Aisha, wasting his ammunition and knowing it, but it grabbed the attention of the wolves and made them leave Jensen alone.

Both wolves turned to Aisha and Clay, and Jensen slammed the office door shut. The noise made them turn around again—

Except Aisha was on them, whirling through them with her knife, tossing one to Clay in an underhand toss. Clay grabbed it and sliced one in the flank, ducked under the flash of fangs to roll under the body and stab up into the guts, continued the roll to come out the other side and slice through the back of the knee to hamper the wolf’s ability to move.

The cuts weren’t healing, though. Well, they weren’t supposed to, but – but the wolves weren’t trying to defend themselves. They were just throwing themselves at Clay and Aisha as if they were living juggernauts.

“Faugh,” Aisha spat on the last wolf, whom she had neatly beheaded. “Humans. Humans turned to wolves, and abominations. No knowledge of their race, of their heritage, and unable to defend themselves.”

Clay didn’t care at the moment; instead, he moved to the door that Jensen had disappeared into and knocked. “Jensen?” he called out.

“Yeah, Boss?”

Jensen’s voice was weak, but he could answer. That had to count for something, right?

Clay opened the door and saw Jensen with his netbook set up on a desk, wired into the computer unit, and Jensen scrabbling through the file cabinets. Jensen’s head was bleeding, as was his side – heavily – and Clay narrowed his eyes at the hacker.

“Transform, and get yourself healed up,” he ordered.

But Jensen shook his head in the negative. “Sorry, Boss, but we got to get this done fast before any more come, because they don’t really need a security system, do they, because they can just smell us and know where we are?”

“That’s a simplification,” Aisha said coolly, before jerking her head at the netbook. “What’s that doing?”

Jensen stared at her with a cold glare. “What I’m doing, but on the computer instead of physically looking through files. What do you think it’s doing?”

“What are you looking for?” Aisha asked. “We can help you if—”

Claws curled around the door and a huge, furred hand tipped with deadly claws swiped at Aisha and sent her flying against the wall, slamming her hard enough that she dented the cheap plywood and drywall. Immediately, Clay leveled his gun and squeezed off three shots.

All hit Roque dead in the chest, and Roque smiled wolfishly at the wounds.

“That’s not gonna hurt me right now,” he growled, voice low and bestial and wet.

Then he launched himself into the room and Clay had to drop down, scrabbling for the knife that Aisha had given him.

Roque, though, seemed to know that the knife could hurt him – he moved even faster than normal, he had a greater control over his change and his body than those other wolves did, and he was _really_ looking for a way to hurt Clay. He completely ignored Jensen, for the most part, which was odd in and of itself, but Clay wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth right this moment – that could come later.

Clay needed room to move, to work, to parry and strike and retreat and advance, so he made his way out of the room, fighting every inch of the way, and Roque just grinned that crazy grin, tearing and slicing and whirling. With his new supernatural status, he was far deadlier, far more terrifying, and if Clay wasn’t certain if he could have won a fight against Roque before, he was _positive_ he couldn’t win a fight now. Instead, he just needed to draw Roque away from Jensen so that Jensen could get the information that he needed.

A low snarl sounded from down the hall, and the lioness suddenly appeared, pouncing on Roque from the side – but Roque was already moving, twisting, to meet the rush.

“We gotta go!” Clay snarled, staggering back into the room – now that he wasn’t focused on dodging the slices and swipes, he was very aware of where he’d been unsuccessful in dodging – and moved to Aisha’s side, slinging her up.

Jensen had a stack of file folders in his hand and jumped to the netbook, fingers flying over the keys. He was trembling, blinking to get the blood out of his eyes, and then he was stuffing everything into the bag he had brought with him. “Take her out, go,” he said quickly, shoving the bag into Clay’s hands. “Get her somewhere safe—”

And then Jensen was transforming, right there in the room, the clothes bulging around his form and then disappearing, then reappearing to constrict around his roiling flesh. Clay swallowed convulsively to keep himself from throwing up before staggering out of the door.

He was halfway down the hall when there was a deep, basso roar and some primal instinct had him twisting to one side, throwing himself against the nearest office door, and the lioness came flying past, in retreat from Roque who had transformed into a wolf that almost came up to Clay’s chest, huge and scarred, black fur wiry and coarse, eyes glittering with a dangerous intelligence. The wolf was bounding after the lioness, bleeding but not as copiously as the lioness was.

“ _Roque_!” Clay bellowed.

The wolf skidded to a stop, and he turned around to stare at Clay carrying the limp form of Aisha and the bag. Something passed through those darkly intelligent eyes, something surprised and almost hopeful, and then the wolf came bounding at Clay.

There was a trumpeting neigh, and Jensen came in horse form and corkscrewed, twisting and letting fly his back legs, catching Roque in his chest.

Clay dodged around the two animals fighting and made his way down the stairs, out the warehouse. Pooch had pulled the van up close, his gun out and helping provide cover fire for Clay. Not that Clay needed cover fire – no one was chasing him.

“Did we get what we needed?” Pooch shouted.

“I dunno!” Clay yelled back, limping towards the back of the van and handing Aisha over to Fahd, who was standing there waiting to take her.

Fahd laid Aisha on one of the benches and held his hands over her body, concentrating. It took Clay a moment before he remembered that Fahd was a healer. Placing the bag on the floor, Clay dragged himself in and leaned out to close the van’s doors—

In time to watch Jensen, in horse form, fall out the windows.


	38. Chapter 38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have a better idea of how long this will take to end. I apologize for just how late this is - we had random guests at our house who just left. And by random I mean my dad called us and told us that they were going to be there in an hour and make certain there was something for them to eat.
> 
> Fun.
> 
> Anywho, Cougar's chapter, kinda rushed because I was supposed to be cleaning the house and then playing host, not typing this. If you see any weirdness or typos, let me know!

Of course it was going to go FUBAR. When did anything go right for them anymore?

Cougar growled under his breath and jammed another magazine into his rifle. The bullets weren’t going to do anything permanent, but their impact knocked the wolves back and gave Jensen space – which Jensen most definitely needed, seeing as how he didn’t know which office held the files and computers that he needed and had to check them all.

Jensen was holding his own pretty okay, though. The lessons that Samira had given them helped; Jensen was moving as fast as he did in their sessions together, and his kicks and thrusts could throw the wolves back pretty far when it came down to it. Still, Jensen with a gun and the backpack he had to protect was a hampered Jensen, and Cougar could see blood on his hacker’s body.

Finally, Clay and Aisha made it up there, just as Jensen obviously found the right office and was trying to get inside and shut the wolves outside the door. Cougar gave them some extra help, driving them away from the door, but Aisha dispatched the wolves pretty quickly and then they were all inside the office.

Which was when it really got fucked up.

Because that was _Roque_ coming up the stairs, barreling down the hallway, moving almost Wade-fast. And Cougar felt he needed to identify that, because those other wolves – they _hadn’t_ been as fast as that, hadn’t been particularly skilled or smart. Roque was skilled and smart and fast, and the most irritating moment of the day was when Roque turned to the window, smirked, and flicked Cougar the bird.

Cougar wanted to tear Roque’s head from his shoulders.

Not that he would, given where he was, or even could, given that werewolves were much harder to kill than normal soldiers. But Samira finally showed, and Roque terrified _her_ into running, which couldn’t be a good thing at all. Then Jensen was there, in horse form, and Cougar sincerely hoped that he’d stashed the information somewhere safe because there was little point going through all this only to lose all the information they had. He was carefully aiming – Roque had transformed into full wolf form once Samira had shown up, and while Roque certainly was smaller than Wade, it wouldn’t normally be a problem except Jensen in horse form was larger than Roque in wolf form, and Cougar didn’t want to hit Jensen accidentally. Bullets would definitely harm Jensen, after all, even though Roque and all the werewolves shrugged them off like water.

Then, suddenly, Roque was slashing at Jensen’s flanks and legs with his teeth, dodging around Jensen’s kicks, and yeah, Roque trained with all of them, they worked as a unit, but Roque had refused to train with both Cougar and Jensen in their animal forms. How he’d managed to get a hold of Jensen’s technique, Cougar didn’t know. Maybe Roque had just not wanted to physically train with them, but was more than happy to watch? Though Cougar had never noticed him hanging around…

He squeezed off a few shots, and Jensen was backing away from Roque, trying to make his way to the stairs – though how a horse was supposed to go down stairs _backwards_ Cougar didn’t know, either, and he wasn’t certain it was possible – when suddenly a particularly hard slash knocked Jensen too far to the side.

And the bullet holes in the glass made it much weaker than it would have been originally, yes, but Cougar was pretty sure that the weight of a horse slamming into the wall-to-wall window would have broken it in any case.

None of that mattered because _Jensen was fucking falling from the window._

Cougar let out a snarl, dropping the rifle and tearing off his clothes, the transformation already started and he jumped out the window himself, throwing himself onto a nearby roof, already in cougar form, but Jensen was a fucking _horse_ , it was a second story window, far enough to kill a horse or at least break legs, and Cougar was too far away, too far to do anything but listen to the shrill scream of terror.

And then – too close, way, way, too close to the ground, and Cougar could imagine with sickly clarity what would happen to Jensen’s legs when he hit – Jensen’s body shivered in the air, and twisted in on itself, and the scream turned into a shriek.

Jensen was turning into a bird.

Not fast enough, though – second story falls weren’t that long, and Jensen hit the ground as Cougar leapt from the nearby roof to a telephone pole, and then leapt over the fence that surrounded the warehouse. Roque stood at the broken window in his wolf form, looking down at them, and Cougar screamed and snarled up at the wolf.

Roque let his tongue loll out, looking as if he was laughing at them, and disappeared from the window.

Cougar wasn’t going to wait around and see if or when Roque was coming down; he scooped up the tiny, misshapen form off the ground in his mouth, ignoring the pitiful shrieks and screeches, and bounded towards the van. Inside, he shoved past Samira – who was in human form now – and Aisha to deposit the crumpled form in Fahd’s lap.

Fahd looked down at what Jensen had turned in to; it was a deformed mix of horse and some kind of bird with talons and a sharp beak, a horse body with a hawk head, wings that were crumpled and bleeding, two tiny malformed front feet and bird feet in the back, tail feathers that turned into silky horse hair at the ends. Anxiously, Cougar looked at the pitiful creature that was the size of a cat, and then looked up at Fahd expectantly.

Fahd cursed under his breath and hesitantly held one hand over the feebly struggling body. After a moment, he shook his head and breathed out, hard. “I can’t do anything for him until he moves fully into one form, or the other. This half-form is an abomination, and he needs to complete the transformation, back out of it, or just become human. This is – I can’t fix this.”

With a deep growl, Cougar put his paws on either side of the bench seat Fahd was on and leaned forward, teeth bared. Cougar could taste fear and sweat and worry from Fahd’s scent even as the healer twitched back, turning his head.

“I can’t do anything! Even if I tried to heal him – and I can only heal bodies I _know_ , not this twisted mistake – it wouldn’t work because his magic would fight to keep mine out. Until he’s done transforming, nothing magical can be done to him!” Fahd said, voice desperate.

Cougar stared him down a moment and then snarled angrily. The van was moving – Pooch was getting them away, as well he should – and that made it difficult to move, but he gently picked up the sadly chirping bird and moved to the back of the van. Placing the crumpled form on the floor, Cougar curled up around the small animal hybrid and tucked his tail tight around them both.

From the seat above, Clay leaned down and frowned at Cougar. “Where’s your rifle? Your kit?”

Cougar pinned his ears back and glowered at Clay. For a long moment, Clay held his gaze, and then the older man let out a sigh. “Right. Okay then.”

Turning his head back to the shivering and trembling bird-horse mix, Cougar began gently licking over Jensen’s form.

Jensen shuddered and cheeped plaintively.

“You have to turn back,” Samira said placidly, leaning down as if to pick up Jensen – and Cougar bared his teeth and snapped at the hand. It didn’t seem to faze her, though she did retract her hand.

“Leave them,” Clay murmured. “They’ll figure it out between them.”

Cougar curled up tighter around Jensen and nuzzled the broken wings, purring and coughing in the back of his throat. Jensen was vibrating now, shaking against Cougar’s side, and Cougar pulled back to watch worriedly as flesh and muscle and blood and bone twisted and writhed against his flank. He didn’t know what to do, or how to help, so he uncurled himself, just a little, to keep from putting pressure on Jensen’s body, and waited anxiously.

It was long after Pooch had stopped at the hotel, gathered up their gear, and driven on, before Jensen finally resumed human shape, naked and slick with blood and fluids, cramped on the floor with Cougar. He was too weak to do more than croak, “Thanks, Cougs,” before falling fast asleep on the floor, still twined around Cougar’s limbs.

At Jensen’s voice, Clay had twisted around to look at them, but Cougar lifted his lips in a silent warning and Clay had turned back around. They were waiting to meet with their weapons supplier for the knives and bullets made of pure metal that they could have used earlier in the evening; now, here at dawn, it seemed like too little, too late.

The meet must have gone well; Clay came in with four large bags, and probably had had to pay extra to replace Cougar’s kit, but as much as Cougar liked his rifles, Jensen was a lot more important than the gun. He didn’t much care that it had cost more.

With nothing to do, and still dealing with his own shock from the situation, Cougar put his head down on Jensen’s shoulder – Jensen was on his back, legs together, pulled up and to one side, to tuck in against Cougar’s flank, one hand buried in Cougar’s fur and the other flung up by his head – and closed his eyes. He needed sleep as well, and Jensen was as safe as could be expected, at the moment.

Still smelled something awful, though.

***

Sometime later, Cougar woke up – it took him a moment before he realized the van had stopped moving, which was what had woken him. Jensen was snoring softly, still out, though he’d tucked himself even tighter against Cougar’s side. Cougar snorted and shifted a little so he could stretch without waking up Jensen, but either Jensen was ready to wake up or Cougar, being stiff, wasn’t as smooth as he thought, because Jensen snuffled a little and then blinked open his eyes, staring at Cougar a minute in confusion.

“Cougs?” he asked, voice still terribly weak, and Cougar dropped his head to nuzzle at Jensen’s jaw before standing up and searching through their bags for clothes.

“Here.”

Cougar looked up to see Samira sitting there, veiled, knees pulled up under her and a small bag of clothes in her hands.

“Your leader asked me to make sure you got this, when you awoke,” she said calmly. “You need to get dressed, and Jensen needs to train himself so that such a thing does not happen again. He came very close to dying, after all.”

“Right here,” Jensen croaked, waving a hand even as he pulled his knees up to his chest. “Where’re we?”

Cougar glowered at Samira, who refused to leave. After a few minutes, he growled in impatience at her.

“You are nowhere near threatening,” she said, amused, and gestured. “You have stripped down and transformed in front of me before. Now should be no different.”

For a long moment, Cougar met her gaze, before grinding his teeth in frustration and slipping into his human skin. Contrary to what Jensen seemed to think – and it hurt Cougar, more than a little, that Jensen didn’t trust him to remain faithful – he didn’t like being on display for this woman who so obviously wanted to get her claws into him. Keeping himself as covered up as he could, he slipped into clothes, shivering quite a bit as the cold hit him harder without fur to protect him. Jensen was shivering too, he realized, and he brought the pants and shirt and socks over to Jensen and placed himself between his lover and Samira so that Jensen could get dressed in peace.

Only it took Jensen a long while to reach anything close to dressed – his hands twitched and shook so badly he could barely get his clothes on, and his muscles were twitching in spasms, cramping up. Cougar took pity on Jensen when he got down to shoes and tied the laces for Jensen.

Obviously embarrassed, Jensen cleared his throat before repeating, “Where are we?”

“On P5. We’ve stopped at a small town; Clay and Aisha went in to get us rooms. Fahd disappeared, I know not where. I had no reason to leave the van, and so I stayed and waited for you to wake up.”

Jensen rubbed at his arms tiredly. “I ache everywhere.”

“You stopped midtransformation. It is almost impossible to come back from that, you realize. If something interrupts the process, or a shifter is unable to complete the transformation, it is highly likely that the shifter will die like that, stuck between forms. If they’re lucky. If they’re not, they’re stable enough to live the rest of their lives stuck between forms.” Samira cocked her head at Jensen. “Why did you not complete the transformation? What stopped you?”

Narrowing his eyes at her, Jensen offered in a darkly sarcastic tone, “The ground?”

“You could have kept on, or you could have transformed in midair before hitting the ground, but instead you stopped in the midst of transforming and hit the ground as you were.” Samira leaned forward, arms folded on the back of the bench seat, her eyes, heavily outlined in kohl, intense. “What made you stop in midair?”

Jensen licked his lips and looked over at Cougar, who lifted a shoulder in mute silence. Cougar didn’t know what to say, couldn’t explain it. He was still trying to grasp the fact that Jensen could transform into a bird, let alone the fact that Jensen was both alive and well.

“I – I was surprised,” Jensen finally said, voice cracking. “I didn’t – I wasn’t expecting. To. Um. Transform. At all. Well, I was trying to head back into human, because I’d survive a fall better as human, and things just. Happened.”

Samira stared at Jensen a long moment before sighing. “I suppose I shouldn’t expect anything sophisticated from humans,” she murmured under her breath. “You’ll need to train with Fahd, though. He has some knowledge of elementals, and the way that they transform into their shapes. What you reached for was not a shifter that I have knowledge of. Birds are normally only ever found with elementals, just as salamanders, rats, and fish. Those are not shifter creatures.”

“Shouldn’t the basic concept be the same?” Jensen asked, frowning. “I really don’t like Fahd. Offense intended.”

“One would think that you don’t trust me.”

Cougar had whipped around, knife in hand from one of the many hiding places in the van, at the first hint of the voice, and slowly he relaxed when he realized Fahd had decided to materialize almost literally out of thin air.

“I don’t,” Jensen said, voice level, but it was obvious he’d been surprised and startled as well from his body language. “I really, really don’t.”

Fahd grinned. “Smart of you. But as it stands, I know what triggers an elemental to shift into their form, and Samira, as skilled as she is, has little knowledge of how elementals work. They are uniquely a western breed, elementals.”

“Besides, studying with Fahd would allow me to focus on Cougar’s other form. For all that you have supernatural blood, Jensen, you are very weak and uncontrolled. Cougar is far superior and can most likely master his form far more easily than you.”

Jensen glowered, and Cougar scooted back a little to sit beside Jensen, letting their legs and shoulders press together. Cougar could tell that Samira was frowning at the contact, but Jensen turned to Cougar and smiled weakly. “Well?” Jensen asked, not bothering to keep his voice down since Samira could hear them in any case. “Do you want to split up our training? I know I’ve been holding you and Samira back, because it’s more difficult for me to utilize my horse form in a fight. Maybe this will help.”

Cougar bit his lip. He didn’t – he didn’t _want_ Jensen to split up from him. He didn’t want a lot of things – he didn’t like Fahd, didn’t like Samira, was especially beginning to hate Aisha for the way that she flirted with Fahd specifically to rile up Clay. But they needed to get this mission over with, needed to find Max and be done. If this would help them…

But there was no guarantee it would. And there was no reason why Fahd and Samira couldn’t teach them both at the same time, and that way they wouldn’t need to be split apart in their training.

Before Cougar could answer, though, Clay and Aisha opened the door, waking Pooch, who’d been asleep in the passenger seat. “We have rooms,” Clay rumbled. “We’re gonna sleep, then head straight down for Moscow. On the way, Jensen, I’ll need you to strip all information you can from what you received. You mentioned Fiji?”

Jensen licked his lips, trying to make his voice stronger, but it was a lost cause. Cougar wondered why, but since he couldn’t ask, he settled for twisting so that he could rest his hand on Jensen’s upper thigh, rubbing his thumb back and forth soothingly. Jensen cleared his throat, smiled at Cougar, and forged on, “Yeah, boss. A lot of scientists attached to Goliath have been transferred there, or are doing conferences there, or had grants to do studies there. I think it’s worth checking into, especially since Max’s India connection doesn’t pan out with further research. Maybe I’ll drag something else up, but I sincerely doubt it; everything I’ve done points there.”

“Then, in Moscow, we’ll keep our covers as academics and travel to New Zealand, rent a boat, and make our way out there. He’s on Fiji?”

“Well. On some nearby island.” Jensen bit his lip and tried to make his voice stronger again. “I can be certain by the time it takes us to reach Moscow.”

Clay gave him a weighty nod and turned to Pooch, who was rubbing sleep out of his eyes. “C’mon, Pooch; help me unload. We’ll stay here and move out in the morning.”

Cougar swallowed his doubts and his worries, and moved to help unload their bags.


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, we're almost at the end! 3 more chapters, Roque and then two of Jensen, and then I'll be done! Thank you all for sticking with this story so far, I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have writing it, and happy new year to you all! I know it's late in the day, so I am sorry about that. But I'll be updating again (possible this late, but most likely earlier) this Wednesday (the second), and then the 7th and 9th and then I'll be focusing on putting up the deleted scenes and the like!
> 
> Hope you all enjoy, and have a great year ahead of you!

Pooch shifted his legs and sighed. At least he wasn’t the tallest guy in the group – the cramped seating had to be killing Jensen. After all, academics couldn’t afford first class, so they were squished into economy, cramped and spread about the inside of the plane. Their flight was made up of three separate flights, bouncing them about the world, but this one was the last leg of their journey, flying from Kuala Lumpur to Sydney. Jensen had lined up a boat that would take them to New Zealand, and then a different one to take them to Fiji.  Conclusive satellite images had allowed Jensen to confirm that Max had landed on Fiji earlier in the week (apparently, it was easier to hack European satellites than Middle Eastern ones) so there was a good chance of ending all this shit.

Jensen, in their layovers and in the airports, had gone through the notes and the data he’d dumped, shooting through it with a speed that surprised Pooch. It was quite obvious that Jensen had put everything aside to work on it, leaving off pretty much everything including his lessons with Fahd, though Cougar had been practicing as often as possible with Samira. Frankly, after the horrible scare Jensen had given them, Pooch had argued that Jensen needed to be practicing more than Cougar, but Jensen had ignored him and Clay was too set on finding proof to clear their names that he let Jensen slide on his training.

No one ever listened to the Pooch.

In the end, Jensen _had_ found proof that showed Max had not only ordered that hit in Bolivia, but that he’d been deploying American teams like pawns around the world, testing the Procedurals’ abilities and refining the serum. There were comprehensive notes about the entire process of creating the procedural formula – apparently, Wade and Max hadn’t been big on technology and didn’t think leaving the notes around would come back to bite them in the ass – which had simultaneously made Fahd, Samira, and Aisha happy and given them a whole new puzzle.

The procedural formula was made from some combination of werewolf saliva or blood, and shapeshifter blood. The scientists had been lying through their teeth when they said ‘the subconscious chooses the animal form’ – either that, or they just hadn’t known. In any case, the array of tests beforehand told the scientists which batch to give to the soldier, but it was the shapeshifter blood that determined what someone changed into. Someone given bear shapeshifter blood would be a bear, and so on. This made sense (to Fahd and Aisha and Samira, at least) and didn’t break the rules of magic; except for the fact that Jensen had been given the blood of a German Shepard shapeshifter, not a horse.

So he was still the monkey wrench in the entire system.

That had just made Jensen more nervous and jittery than normal, especially since Fahd and Samira had been asking extremely invasive questions as to what could have made him take a horse form when there was no magical basis for such a thing to happen. Jensen had taken to sequestering himself away from everyone as much as possible. Well, to be fair to Jensen, he was just trying to avoid Aisha, Samira, and Fahd, but since Samira was always with Cougar now, and Aisha hung out with Clay often enough to make Pooch shake his head in despair at their leader, and Fahd had this creepy way of always hanging around _one_ of the Losers, Jensen was essentially hanging out exclusively with Pooch or all on his own.

Now, though, sitting in cramped and crowded economy seats, Clay and Jensen up near the front of the aisles and Fahd and Aisha in the back, Samira somewhere in the middle, and Pooch directly next to Cougar in the plane, he could ask something that had been bothering him a while.

“You okay, Cougar?” he murmured.

Cougar was sitting next to the window, and he turned away from the sunset to blink at Pooch in confusion. Pooch really hated that traveling as in disguise as possible – since yeah, they had to fly under Max’s radar, sure, but they _also_ had to fly under CIA and Interpol and really everyone’s radar, after their names had been plastered over the international news because of Bolivia – because Cougar didn’t look right without that damned hat of his. Jensen didn’t look right without his beard, Clay trying to dress casual just looked plain unnatural – but those were all distinctive marks that had made the Losers the _Losers_ ; identifiable, notable, and recognizable. That, and Roque’s scar, but since Roque wasn’t with them anymore…

Pooch shoved away those thoughts, especially considering the fact that Roque was alive and still hadn’t contacted them or come back to them, and instead was helping _Max_ … and instead focused on Cougar’s quirked eyebrow and furrowed brow.

“Don’t pull that innocent act on me; you’re not hiding it as well as you think you are,” Pooch said pointedly. “What’s up?”

Letting out an annoyed sigh, Cougar looked around him and then back at Pooch.

“Don’t even try and pretend it’s because of the environment,” Pooch said, a bit snippy. “I know I’m no Roque, but I can notice when something’s off. Hell, normally Jensen, for all that he’s socially oblivious, picks up on this. Really falling down on the job, isn’t he?”

That made Cougar jerk his head up and glare challengingly at Pooch.

“Just calling it like I see it, Cougs.” Pooch rubbed the back of his neck and let out a sigh. “You’ve been keeping Jensen held together, as much as you can with your lessons.” Cougar flinched and looked away, but dragged his eyes back to Pooch as Pooch continued, “but I know Jensen’s been more than a little scattered since we were heading _to_ that warehouse, let alone coming on the way back with him in that twisted up form.”

For a long minute, Cougar held Pooch’s steady gaze. Then he licked his lips and glanced back at the window.

Pooch bumped Cougar’s shoulder with his own. “C’mon, Cougs. What’s wrong?”

“It’s – it’s nothing,” Cougar replied quietly, voice halting. “Just – worry. Concern. Clay is not thinking straight. Jensen may not be as stretched thin as he had been before, but… he is so much more intense. Determined.”

Letting out a sigh, Pooch poked at Cougar’s ribs. “I wasn’t asking about _them_ , Cougs.”

Cougar cleared his throat. “I’m fine, Pooch.”

“If there’s anything I can help with, really, Cougs…” Pooch trailed off, remembering the small flinch of Cougar’s from earlier. “Well, then how’s your lessons going? With Samira?”

Cougar’s shoulders tensed up.

“I mean, she’s been really focused, dragging you off every time we have some downtime. She must be pushing you really hard. After all, Fahd’s been dragging at Jensen, and only Jensen’s computer mojo has been keeping him from being dragged off as often as you’ve been dragged off,” Pooch continued, watching Cougar closely.

Cougar swallowed hard.

“Because, you know, if she’d been doing something to hurt you or harm you, you’d tell us, so she must be helping you in some way, yeah?” Pooch leaned forward, and his voice went hard and steely. “Because if she’d been doing something to you, I will tear her apart. _Jensen_ will tear her apart; you know how stupidly jealous and protective he’s been since it’s been obvious Samira’s been aiming to get her claws into you.”

“That is why he cannot know,” Cougar said, voice so quiet that Pooch almost didn’t even hear. “I do need the lessons, and she has not approached me in – that way.”

Pooch leaned closer, one hand clamping around Cougar’s bicep and holding tight. “Look, none of us trust her, none of us _like_ her, so you got to understand, if you’ve been giving us the impression that everything’s been all okay and it _hasn’t_ been, you’re going to be in such hot water. How the hell is this different from when Jensen forgets his gun or shit like that? You are part of _us_ and if you aren’t letting us watch your back, we’re not functioning as a team. Okay? Look, I’m sick to death of being stalked by Fahd – I’ll hang out at your lessons now. But what is it? You have to tell me what’s the matter, have to give us something, because we’re not going to work well if we’re hiding things from one another. Again. Okay?”

Cougar breathed in, a deep, steadying breath, before licking his lips again. “You – you are not unwelcome at my lessons. If you wish to sit in.”

“And it’s not sexual advances?” Pooch said flatly, and was glad that his cheeks didn’t show his blush.

Cougar’s cheeks did, though. “No. It is – well. She still – says things. But Jensen has made it clear, we are together. And she does not like it, but she hasn’t – done anything. Drastic.”

Pooch glanced up at the front of the plane, where Clay was leaning his chair back and closing his eyes. “Well, then, what is it?” Pooch tried to think about what would make Cougar the most upset, or most unnerved, and asked quietly, “Is she – making it difficult for you to – to shoot or something?”

That made Cougar laugh a little. “No. No, she… her lessons help, Pooch. They do. I am better with my other form now, than ever. But… it makes it difficult for me. To remain… human.”

Pooch tried to make sense of what Cougar was saying. “She’s making your animal side more – animal-like?”

Cougar’s laugh was bitter this time. “A good description. But – maybe it is not her. Maybe it is just me.”

“Run that by me again?” Pooch asked, confused.

Cougar spread his hands out in front of him. “We were warned, yes? Longer you stay animal, the more control you lose. Every day, past week, past two weeks, nothing but training to bring my animal to the front. To make myself faster, to become like a real shapeshifter. So maybe this is because of that, not because she is – she wants me to become an animal.”

“Well. You’ll have me, and Clay, and Jensen, to help you remember yourself, okay? And I’ll come by your practices, hang out. At least maybe she’ll stop being a creepy molester if I’m around,” Pooch murmured. He forgot, sometime, that Cougar was the youngest out of the group, and he did his absolute best to remain completely controlled at all times. No wonder losing control of himself and become an animal was something that was bothering him deeply. It wasn’t something that Pooch could fix, but he trusted Cougar to get a hold of it, and sometimes all you really needed was proof that someone trusted you when you couldn’t manage to trust yourself.

Smiling slightly, Cougar nodded and elbowed Pooch in the ribs. Considering that Pooch had dragged out more words than Cougar was normally fine with, Pooch just smiled and elbowed Cougar back.

***

Pooch didn’t know if him sitting there while Samira taught Cougar how to transform just part of his body into his animal form and use it to devastating effect really helped or not, but it gave him something to do while Jensen did… something on his many computers, Pooch had given up trying to keep track of what Jensen was trying to do. Clay and Aisha had disappeared to locate weapons and the specific island Max had set up base on, now that they were in Fiji and preparing for this last, big strike. And Fahd – Fahd was reading over the notes that Jensen had recovered that discussed how the procedural formula and the ghoul formula was made, trying to build something that would reverse the process. Well, trying to build something that would reverse the process for the procedural formula; Fahd had already cooked up something that would neutralize the ghoul formula, and Jensen had passed that on to his friend.

Cougar let out a snarl and twisted, fingers twisting and hardening into claws and he pinned Samira through her gut against the nearest tree.

Samira, in her half-human, half-lioness form, smiled through bloody teeth. “Now, you are almost true shifter. If not for your scent, you could even pass.”

With disgust, Cougar tore his fingers out of her abdomen and stalked away, pacing to try and cool himself down.

Movement made Pooch turn to see Jensen coming out of the rented two-story building and sit down on the bench beside Pooch, laptop balanced on his knees. “What’s going on?”

“Cougar’s getting pretty good at it,” Pooch grunted. “You talk to him recently?”

Jensen worried at his lower lip, shoulders hunching up around his ears. “Not really. I’ve been trying to get this done. Trying to decode some of the encrypted bits, because yeah, Max didn’t seem to care who read his notes, but the scientists he had kidnapped or whatever certainly didn’t want anyone finding and duplicating their process. He always seems fine. And now that we’re constantly with our friendly neighborhood magic users, we can’t really… have time alone. That bitch is always around him.”

“You really ought to take time and speak to him,” Pooch scolded mildly. “He helps you, but from the outside it sure as shit doesn’t look like you’re helping him any.”

Jensen’s head sunk even lower. “Yeah, I know. It’s just – he never seems to need me, you know?” He smiled a small, self-deprecating smile. “I need him so much more than he needs me. Sometimes I wonder why he doesn’t go off with Samira – after all, she’s fucking amazing and crazy dangerous, and I’m just the geek hacker who takes without giving.”

Pooch stared at him a long moment, and then gestured at Jensen.

“What?”

“C’mere,” Pooch grunted.

Jensen blinked at Pooch, and scooted closer.

Pooch slapped him on the back of the head.

“Ow, what the fuck?!” Jensen yelped, jerking back.

“You, Jensen, are a fucking idiot. He doesn’t want Samira – he wants _your_ stupid ass, and if you don’t know why it’s ‘cause you’re fucking fishing for compliments. I have never met two idiots so stupidly gone over one another as you two, okay?” Pooch snarled. “You’ve got something great with one another and if anyone messes it up, it’s gonna be because you two don’t fucking communicate with one another!”

Jensen stared at Pooch for a long minute.

“Look, you love him. He loves you. No matter what’s going on between you two, that hasn’t changed. _Obviously_. So you’ve got that going for you. Now, he needs to speak with you, you need to speak with him, and this shit needs to be cleaned up _now_ before we move tonight. Jesus fucking Christ.” Pooch scrubbed at his face and silently prayed for patience, because his teammates were going to drive him up the fucking wall.

“So – you’re sure?”

“Fucking _Christ_ on a pogo stick, Cougar!”

Cougar whipped around to glower at the two of them sitting on the bench.

“Come over here!”

“Wait, what? Pooch, come on, he’s in the middle of his lesson—” Jensen said.

Pooch tuned him out, watching as Cougar stalked over with inhuman eyes. Obviously hadn’t been kidding about the losing control, but that’s why they were here, weren’t they? To keep him human. “Do you love this dumb bastard or not?”

Cougar squinted at the two of them, losing the bestial look and instead turning to Jensen, who was fidgeting nervously. With a sharp growl, Cougar bent down and grabbed Jensen’s chin and kissed him.

Pooch didn’t look – he didn’t want to, frankly, because it was like watching a family member making out, something intensely intimate and weirdly creepy all at once. Instead, he looked over at Samira, who was glowering at Cougar and Jensen. When she caught Pooch staring at her, Pooch bared his teeth in a threatening smile.

Samira turned and walked into the house.

Grinning to himself, Pooch leaned back and tried to ignore the happy noises next to him.

***

“Alright. This is how it’s going to work out,” Clay grunted, staring at the map on the table. Pooch leaned against the wall behind Clay’s right shoulder, staring across the room at Cougar. He looked far more relaxed, though whether that was just the rather enthusiastic sex they had had on the beach near the rental house – loud enough that Pooch ended up stealing Jensen’s noise-canceling headphones – or because he’d finally had Jensen establish their relationship in front of Samira, Pooch wasn’t certain. In any case, Cougar was perched on the small counter, heel absently hitting into the cabinet, and Aisha stood just a little ways away from him. Jensen was sitting at the table, two laptops on either side of him, and Fahd was sitting in a chair at the table as well, balanced on the back two legs of the chair. Samira stood by herself, arms folded, next to a window. She looked personally offended at Cougar, though why she would be, Pooch didn’t know. Aisha and Clay had come back triumphant, with enough ammunition to support a small army, and had laid out the map with an island circled in red. Now, close to sunset, they were getting ready to hit the island as soon as it was full dark.

“Aisha identified the one island her spells could not find even though her eyes physically told her it was there,” Clay explained, pointing at the circled island. “Luckily, Max either doesn’t enjoy boat rides or plane rides, but he picked one that, while not very close, is still within a few hours’ boat ride from here. We have a boat that Aisha will propel with spells until we get close enough to the island to row it in. Aisha tells me Fahd probably has created alarms that will notice if magic he doesn’t recognize is cast too close to it, so we’ll have to get in under pure man power, no motor, because we know he has werewolves and that they have good ears. That also means absolutely no noise if we can help it. We’re already hoping that our boat in the water won’t sound any different from whatever boat they have docked, assuming they didn’t pull their boat up onto the island.”

Jensen tapped his pen on the island. “Satellite pictures give us a few general pictures, nothing extremely detailed, but it looks like three warehouses built, one large mansion, and a couple of smaller buildings that might be barracks. We’re going to be looking in the mansion itself – we’ve got night vision goggles, because as sure as shit you know these werewolves have better vision, and vampires are fucking creatures of the night, he’ll be able to see. We’ll need to see what he’s cooking up in those warehouses, make sure there’s no other biological weapons he can set on us – that’s probably going to be Samira and Fahd, since they know what to look for, and Pooch, you wanna ride herd on them?”

Fahd let the chair drop down, eyebrows coming together in a scowl, but Pooch was perfectly fine with it. “I’m cool,” he said easily, before either Samira or Fahd could say anything.

Continuing, as if he wasn’t receiving death glares from Fahd and Samira, Jensen put a printed picture on the table beside the island on the map. “Of the three warehouses, one of them’s probably a storehouse for food and shit, and for the scientists to live in. One’s probably production, and the last is the final product. Hopefully, the last isn’t going to have a lot in it; ideally, it’ll have nothing in it, but plan that one warehouse we _do not fucking blow up at all_ , okay? I don’t know which one – you’ll have to check all three. The one that is for production probably has offices – and this one, here, in the middle, has offices, see, these windows up here? No reason for this extra line of windows unless it’s for small rooms. Unless this is where the scientists are being kept.”

“We’ll check it out.”

“You’ll need to grab every file you can. We need to know what they’re making. If there’s any obvious clues, yay, but most likely just empty out desks, file cabinets if they have it. And here,” Jensen said, placing a black square with a cord attached. “Plug that in, click the prompts to say ‘download all’, on any computer you find. This baby’s one of the biggest storage units in the world; it should be able to hold pretty much anything you find on any computer units. You’ll go in with bags, to get all the files and shit. Your job is really just to get in, find any weaponry, get a sample, and get any information and then get the fuck back to the boat. If it comes down to it and some bad shit happens, that stuff needs to get off the island. You’ll come back to this house, you’ll log onto my netbook with your username and password, Pooch, and there’ll automatically be someone coming here to pick you up. Fahd and Samira, once you help us get that information, your job’s done. We’ll either be alive or dead, but either way, Fahd, you’ll have a sample of the formulas – _all_ of them – and you, Samira, you’ll have enough information to go tell your mistress.”

“Which leaves us,” Aisha said, looking at Clay, Jensen, and Cougar. “Jensen will need to make sure there’s no security, or if there is, to hack the security and give us the general layout of the mansion. Max will most likely be awake; vampires are nocturnal for the most part, so even if he’s letting his scientists sleep he might be fucking someone or eating someone, or reading a book, I don’t fucking care – but he’ll be awake and we’ll need to use any security cameras to find him specifically. The werewolves are probably in the barracks, but there might be a few – or all – of them in the house with him. We’ll need to get past them, get to him, and once I get in front of him I’ll be able to do what I need to do.”

“Cougar will provide cover for Jensen to hack into the security, and then, once you give us directions, I want you guys to take out as many werewolves as you can. Aisha’s got us bullets that are pure metal, and we’ve got those machetes and knives. Make our way as clear as possible. We’ll all be connected with comm. units, but the minute it looks like we’re in trouble, I want you guys to bail. Alright? We can’t throw all our lives away here. We’ve got the best chance, yeah, but the minute he knows we’re there he’s not going to be easy prey and we need to make sure he’s fucking stopped. Alright?”

Jensen shifted in the chair, tapping the pen against the table. “See, that part doesn’t sit right with me. If we’ve got Pooch and the information out, if you guys are in trouble, and Cougs and I are already in the house, I don’t see why we can’t be your backup.”

Folding her arms, Aisha stared him down. “Listen to your team leader,” she said shortly. “If we don’t succeed, a team of three is better than a team of one.” She nodded at Pooch, but Pooch didn’t nod back. Her words sounded… off, for lack of a better term. “Besides, I’m confident in what I have to stop Max. It should be finished tonight, in our favor. If not, you’ll need to track him down again before he lashes out – and he _will_ lash out. Hitting him in the seat of his power, disrupting his plans a second time? There’s no way Max will let that pass.”

Jensen cocked his head and looked at Cougar, who looked implacably back. Clay cleared his throat loudly, dragging Jensen’s attention back.

“We’ll be fine. I trust Aisha’s got the magic whatever to fix Max up, and I’m there to make certain no nasty surprises take her out before she can get Max. It should be an easy in, easy out run. No heroics. Alright?”

Cougar’s mouth twitched as if he wanted to say something, but then he met Jensen’s gaze and relaxed a little. Pooch let his eyes travel over to Jensen, whose body language made it clear he didn’t agree with that part of it at all, and decided that Jensen would keep a good enough eye on Clay that Pooch didn’t have to worry. After all, Clay might trust Aisha, but none of the rest of them did at all.

When no one spoke, Clay lingered on Jensen, obviously reading the mutiny in Jensen’s posture, but since Jensen didn’t speak up, Clay sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Alright, then. Three more hours, and then it’ll be a five hour boat ride out, so we’ll hit them around oh-three hundred. Get ready, Jensen, make certain your contacts know what to do if Pooch needs to contact them, and let’s end this thing.”


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just Jensen's perspective left, and then an epilogue - probably from Jensen's perspective, too. And then we're done! And I know, it's rushed, it's low-quality, but to be quite honest I never thought it would go this far or this long, and I write horrible action sequences. o.o;; Forgive me?
> 
> Thank you all for sticking with it even with the decreased quality. Maybe one day I'll go back over and refine it, when I've learned how to write action in a semi-intelligent way.

Roque shifted uneasily. Max had been speechless with rage at the fact that Clay and the rest of the Losers – and some others who Clay must have picked up to deal with this new world, but Roque didn’t know them at all – and had torn into Roque with a vengeance, and then killed two werewolves, apparently just for the hell of it, because he then grabbed another werewolf and fed off of the poor fucker, savaging the wolf’s throat and crippling one of the few good wolves left. And Roque…

Roque was _very_ uneasy.

He knew, objectively, that Clay and the others would be here soon. Max had forbidden him from leading them here, either by action or inaction, but he hadn’t thought to tell Roque to destroy all files and computer information. Max, being supernatural, didn’t put much stock in humans at all. He thought them beneath him, thought that any human-turned-werewolf was by nature inferior. Roque took savage advantage of that when he could.

Still…

Clay wasn’t going to accept him back. He’d betrayed them – for good reason, because that bitch Aisha was bad news for the group and was going to get them killed – and nothing would ever change that. Roque had sealed his fate the minute he’d made the decision to call Wade. Hell, even if Wade hadn’t immediately turned him on sight, he’d still be in this predicament. There was nothing Roque could do to make Clay take him back.

So right now, he was just gunning for true death.

“You’re twitchy.”

Roque didn’t flinch – he’d heard Victor coming up, after all – but nodded to the dark water spread out around them. “Everyone in place?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” he murmured, fingers playing over one his knives. He’d lost all his favorites in the plane fire; the replacements were good, but they didn’t have the memories attached to them that his old knives had. He wasn’t certain whether that was a good thing or not.

Victor – a huge, hulking man with dark skin and black hair, but startlingly light gold eyes – leaned against the railing of the balcony and tilted his head at Roque. “We’d been betting you wouldn’t last long,” he said casually.

Roque barked out a laugh and turned to look at Victor. The other man had at least three or four inches on Roque, but Roque didn’t bother trying to make this a challenge of some kind. After all, he’d already put Victor in his place – twice.

Victor grinned, teeth a white flash in the otherwise pitch-black night, and continued, “You were turned later than anyone else. By all rights, you should be the omega, our little bitch. But you’re not. And I guess I gotta ask – why not? Because I had to put up with a lot of shit when I was turned, but you just jumped over that whole period.”

“None of you fuckers seem to realize,” Roque said mildly, scratching at his jaw with the edge of the knife, delicate enough not to break skin but hard enough to soothe the itch, “that I was a fucking animal before I was turned. Wade just gave me claws and fangs.” He grinned, and he knew it wasn’t a particularly nice grin at all. Victor swallowed hard as Roque continued, blithe and as casual as Victor had been moments earlier, “See, you fuckers aren’t black ops. You aren’t anything but jarheads, or random civilians Wade poached. None of you are near the level of shit I’ve seen.”

Victor stared a moment earlier, and then dropped his eyes and twisted his head in the sign that Roque was beginning to recognize as submission. “Right, boss. Well. You’re twitchy tonight – something to watch out for?”

“Mmm,” Roque hummed, letting the subject drop to look back out over the water. “We’re gonna have company, I just know it. Question is just when. So keep your eyes and ears sharp. Make certain those on first watch are warned.”

Victor nodded and left the balcony.

“Melodramatic, wasn’t that?” The voice was a cruel purr, a hiss of sound that never failed to send ice up Roque’s spine. “Poor baby nearly pissed his pants.”

Roque kept his eyes downcast. You never talked to Max unless Max asked you a direct question – it was for the best, really. Less reason for Max to take offense and go apeshit on your ass.

Strong fingers curled around Roque’s neck and dragged Roque down to his knees. Roque went – well, not willingly, because it killed him every time he had to submit to this asshole, but easily, because just as much as he hated this man, he wanted to live. Disobeying Max was not conducive to living.

“So you think they’re coming. Even though I forbid you from letting them know how to get here. How would they know to come, Roque, if you didn’t let them know?” Max leaned down, eyes flashing, and white teeth lengthening into fangs that terrified Roque far more than he cared to admit.

“They have a computer expert with them. As much as humans aren’t physically or magically your match, they have other ways of making up for it. I’m sure there are lots of trails that I don’t know how to cover up, and that you wouldn’t know to cover up because you’ve never had to deal with the more recent technology. There are probably any number of ways that they could have found out where we are,” Roque said, careful to keep his voice respectful and even.

Max snarled, a bestial sound that made fire and pain race up and down Roque’s veins, and he fought not to drop to his knees and convulse. The geas that kept him bound to Max’s orders made him respond when Max was pleased and when Max was angry, and Roque hated that he could be brought low with a single word or sent flying from another word.

“They managed to kill Wade, _my_ Wade, that no one of the magical community could _touch_ because he was _mine_!” Max hissed, his voice sounding like scales slipping over rough stone. “Then they found _you_ and killed _three_ of my wolves!”

Roque kept his eyes down, thinking back to the encounter earlier in the week. He’d been the one to catch Jensen’s scent in the compound, but he hadn’t been the one to send up the alarm. That had been Remy, one of the more recently changed that was barely able to control himself in human form let alone in wolf. After all, Roque was only required to keep them from finding _Max_ , and Max wasn’t there, had left long ago to start his operations here. The geas laid on him also required him to remove intruders from the warehouse, but there was no specifications as to _when_ Roque had to remove them.

So when Remy had sniffed them out, had taken the other wolves left to corner them, and had ended up dead, Roque had decided he’d given Jensen time enough to find what he needed to in order to learn more about Max’s endgame. He’d gone up, smooth and easy and comfortable in his skin in a way that most other wolves weren’t, and had proceeded to play with his food.

Okay, he hadn’t played with Aisha. He’d wanted to kill the bitch, and had been willing to make certain that it happened if Clay hadn’t interfered.

It was – and Roque knew how psychotic it made him sound – _fun_ , to fight with Clay. As he was, he was so much faster, so much stronger, and every move Clay made was telegraphed so fucking clear that Roque had to fight not to laugh. He dodged and twisted lazily, letting his claws slice deep enough to look serious but not enough to really cripple Clay, taking his time, letting himself being maneuvered out of the room to give Jensen time – poor guy was bleeding; those wolves must’ve gotten to him, though they were all dead, and Roque couldn’t bring himself to care at all.

And then a fucking _lioness_ pounced at him from the hallway.

There were bullets hitting him – probably Cougar, from the opposite building – but he still had time to duck and turn, to let fur crawl up his hands and arms to turn all his fingers into deadly claws. He didn’t know who this bitch was, but she wasn’t a Loser which meant fair game. He was having the time of his life, sliding into his second form with a roar and chasing after the lioness (and yeah, he was doing some heavy suppressing because there had been a fucking reason he’d turned down the procedural formula time after time, but if he remained consciously hateful of his second form Max would pick it up in a second and use it to tear Roque apart).

Then Clay had called his name.

It – Roque hadn’t even known how to describe it. Because it hadn’t been a call for Roque’s attention, for all that it had been just Roque’s name and nothing else. That was an order to stop, one that Roque remembered from when he’d been in the Losers – a way for Clay to tell him to rein himself in, to hold himself back.

But Clay had called out his name, telling Roque to stop, and Roque _found himself physically unable to follow the lioness_.

From his (limited) experience, the geas worked one way – Max told him something, and either it was an immediate order that Roque’s body obeyed without consulting Roque first, or it was a delayed order that buzzed at the back of Roque’s mind until he fulfilled it.

Only Max was supposed to be able to do that, though. Clay’s order to stop shouldn’t have made it physically _impossible_ for Roque to continue.

That – that meant a lot. That meant that if Roque could argue his way out of this, could somehow make sure Max died completely, Clay might take him back. Clay certainly could order him around. It meant that Clay was still his alpha, for all that Max was his master.

None of that mattered right now, because Max was still ranting and snarling around Roque, and Roque simply sat there on his knees and kept his head bowed, thinking about the darkness, and how it hid anyone from approaching, and how Max really couldn’t comprehend how a bunch of humans could fuck up his plans so badly.

That thought made it easier to keep from lashing out when Max backhanded him and sent him into the wall.

***

When it happened, it happened suddenly, and Roque wasn’t – well, okay, yeah, he was scrambling to catch up, but considering he wasn’t moving superfast to fix it in the first place, the scrambling made sense. There were reports of scents, a boat that had beached in a small inlet that was well hidden and wet enough to muddle scents for a while before the guards could conclusively figure out someone had landed and then figure out where the boat was.

Roque took a moment, listening the reports given to him by his different guards, figuring out the plan that Clay would have built up and how they would implement it. Deciding that letting the Losers get their hands on the scientists and the biological weapons was perfectly fine with him, he jerked his head at the mansion. “First job’s to protect Max,” he barked out. “Inside, set up a perimeter, regularly wander the halls. Teams of two.”

It wasn’t as if there were very many werewolves, what with Max killing them or eating them, but there were enough to make it look like they were patrolling the mansion while really leaving huge gaps because the thing was a fucking rabbit’s warren, all twisted up and with hallways and stupid-ass stairways that were absolutely unnecessary but thrown in because whatever human builder Max had found had been charmed with the idea of creating a monstrosity of a mansion.

Or, hell, maybe it was a magical building and the hallways and staircases and random-ass rooms actually built, like, a fucking rune or something. Roque didn’t know.

There was gunfire, sharp and sudden, from one hallway in the mansion, and the howl of a dying wolf. It made Roque curious – Max had said that nothing (short of being thrown into a plane turbine) would kill him, but obviously his wolves had died in Russia and were dying now – but at the moment, he ran through a few situations. They’d have sent someone to get information, which is why he’d pulled all wolves from the warehouses and stuck them in the mansion. They’d have to deal with the other supernatural creatures on their own. It wasn’t like Roque could order them around anyway.

But they’d also want Max. Clay’s hard-on for this guy was the fodder of legends, seriously, and Jensen was pretty keen on the guy, too. So, all in all, there would be two teams, one getting information and one getting into the house.

Just the thought of someone coming after Max made the latent geas in the back of Roque’s mind buzz to life and he shook his head, growling under his breath. On the one hand, he could stay here in the control booth, guard the security system to make certain no one could hack into it – because at least Max had been smart enough to make the security system a self-contained system that could only be hacked by an actual physical presence messing with the computers. Or he could head over to Max and make certain that Max remained safe and sound. Both would fulfill the geas, in a way.

But going to Max’s side and leaving the control booth unprotected was more immediate.

Smirking, he made his way through the house on silent feet, listening to the tread of the other wolves, the heavier tread of human feet.

He was ready for this to be over, one way or the other.

***

Max, of course, was sitting in his study, listening to his pet – whatever, Roque had no idea what kind of supernatural creature she was, just that she was the lead person on developing whatever new weapon Max had designed – explain the final product. They had just finished creating the finalized product, had maybe a three or four syringes of the serum, and the human scientists Max had flown in here were here to vaporize it so it could become an airborne pathogen. Max wanted something very specific, though he hadn’t confided into anyone beyond that small notebook he had on him. Turning humans to werewolves was the first step, the procedural formula had been after it, and that fucking formula that ended up with them exiled to Bolivia was the last step. This, whatever ‘this’ was, was the culmination of it all. Max had been overly excited over the results of the trials, had been making offhand comments about picking a country to rule once everything was complete, so it made sense that he’d have two syringes of the finished stuff, tapping one finger on them as the girl – woman – described how quickly more could be made and the long-term effects.

Max looked over from the woman to glare at Roque. “Back for more? Have I finally turned you into a masochist?”

“Intruders,” Roque replied, trying not to respond to the dig.

Max raised an eyebrow at him and spread his hands expansively. “So? Go, fetch, doggie!”

“I have the other wolves securing the perimeter. Just in case, I’m going to stand here and guard your weapon and yourself,” Roque replied, voice mild and level.

“Do you think I can’t defend myself?” Max asked, voice reaching that dangerous level of casualness and levity.

The woman cleared her throat. Max’s eyes flew to her, and she gestured at Roque. “The geas you told me to transfer to him from Wade?”

Huffing out an annoyed breath, Max folded his arms and turned back to her. “Very well. Stand in a corner somewhere.”

Obediently, Roque moved off to a corner and leaned against a wall, tuning out their continued conversation about timelines and technical measures needed to build up the supply of the serum, caressing the various knives he had secured about his person. He could hear movement outside, slowly getting louder as the treads approached the doorway – not werewolves. Still, they might move on and not come in here. He didn’t have to interrupt Max, who was putting the syringes in a case, now.

The door flew open and bullets sprayed the inside of the room.

Immediately, Roque jumped in front of Max, body shifting into his wolf form – which wasn’t anywhere near Wade’s size, but had the advantage of being nonhuman which meant Max couldn’t force him to speak. The bullets burned – he knew some things could hurt his inhuman form, but shit, they really _burned_.

It was just that bitch and Clay, no one else, and it was easy enough to convince his mind that Aisha was the biggest threat and go after her. Within minutes, he had her pinned, savaging her arm that held her knife, clawing at her when he could, rolling with her on the floor.

The woman was smart, dashing out of the room from the second door, and Max grabbed the case and began to make his escape as well. Clay, though, Clay didn’t head after Max – he turned and moved to help Aisha.

Aisha’s eyes glowed a violet-pink combination and she snarled out, “Go track down Max! For me, track down Max!”

And, what the absolute _fuck_ , Clay’s eyes glowed a fainter color and he turned and followed Max out of the room.

Well. Well, _shit_.


	41. Chapter 41

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is so, so horribly late I don't even know how to explain it. Except yay, I finished the story? o.o;;
> 
> For the longest time I was just stuck at one part, no idea how to continue, and every couple of days I'd add on, max, a sentence or two. And then, literally yesterday, I figured out how to flow. Late-night typing yesterday and rushed typing today bring you this and the next chapter. I sincerely hope I caught most of the typos but you never know.
> 
> Thank you all for anyone who still stuck with this story until these last two chapters!

Things were going their way. It was actually really, really going their way. Jake was surprised; Pooch had radioed in – not with words, because they were still trying to go in as unobserved as possible, but with a hastily put-together bastardized mores code, clicks and taps against their mics – that they had gone first to the wrong warehouse, that had nothing more than storage and reserves like food and supplies, and then got into the right warehouse and were cleaning it out.

Then the four of them, Jake, Clay, Cougar, and Aisha, got to the mansion and took out the two main guards. The mansion looked like a horrendous place to try and track down someone in; it made no logical sense from the outside, which meant bad things when you thought about what it must look like _inside_. Still, Aisha had grunted under her breath and leaned over the table in the control guards’ booth, grabbing a scrap of paper and hastily sketching a basic floor plan.

It had worried Jake, in the abstract, that while on mission Clay had taken time to look at Aisha instead of what she was drawing, but he was focusing on her words before he could mention it, watching as she explained, “He’s built his house as a sorcerer or arithmancer might; I don’t know where each room is, but the ground floor would hold any type of technology, meaning your security room would be there. Second floor most likely holds his personal study or library – something where he can sit and gloat, because he’s a vampire and they are nature’s worst dramatics. The most he has in any level of the place are passive wards.”

“Passive wards?” Jake repeated, looking up from the crude drawing to see Cougar glaring at Clay.

“Yeah,” she said, grabbing Jake’s attention again. “Vampires don’t have their own magic in the way that witches, wizards, sorcerers, or arithmancers have. He can’t do anything more than maybe carve protective runes in the wood, and those deter attacks but don’t stop them. You might feel some resistance, like the air getting soupy, but as long as you keep pushing forward everything will be fine.”

“Okay. We’ll all find the security room first, right? We can use it to find the cameras in the house, and maybe even see where all the patrols are. Then I’ll direct you and Clay through the house, give you a heads-up if something’s coming your way, and Cougar will cover me, right?”

Aisha gave him an impatient look. “We’ve already covered this, Jensen.”

Jake bit his lip, not willing to say that he had been repeating it in hopes to shake Clay out of whatever was distracting him. Clay really wasn’t acting as himself – he’d been fine, back at the rented house they had in Fiji, but now he looked continuously distracted, pale. Jensen looked away from Clay to Cougar and saw the sniper baring his teeth at Clay.

“Okay, well, let’s go!” Jake said with too much enthusiasm, pushing forward. “Aisha, since you can’t do any magic because of the general shield, you stick close to Cougar, okay? Okay! Clay, come with me!”

Grabbing Clay’s elbow, he dragged Clay out of the booth. “C’mon, bossman, what the hell is going on?” he hissed under his breath, gun held at the ready as they moved across the yard – why weren’t there any guards here? Was it really going to be as easy as just walk in the front door?

“Jensen?”

“Oh, now you’ll answer me? Well, maybe now I don’t want to talk to you!” Jake snipped, eyes darting from one side to the other. It was too fucking easy. Something was wrong, somewhere, and he had no idea what it was, just that it was going to screw them over at the worst possible moment—

A howl rose from the shoreline, and muffled gunfire came from the warehouse.

“Oh, good, I thought for one minute our plan was going to go off without a hitch,” Jensen breathed.

Clay grabbed Jensen’s elbow and pulled him to a halt. “ _Jensen_.”

“Yeah? Boss, look, I don’t know what your problem is, but you’re going to get us killed, okay? You are going to end up in the dirt and we’re gonna be having to drag your body out of here,” Jake growled.

Clay stared at Jensen hard, looking as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t. Finally, he let out a frustrated snarl and said roughly, “Look, keep a close eye on me, okay?”

“Uh… okay? Boss, when do I _not_? My job is pretty much ‘watch the security footage and pray my teammates don’t ignore my directions and run the opposite way into the path of the guys with the guns’!”

“Are we done talking about our feelings, boys?” Aisha hissed from up ahead, at the door.

Sighing, Clay moved past Jake and up the steps. Standing in the middle, both guns out, he nodded to Cougar.

Cougar crouched down and to the side, deftly picking the lock, and then turning the knob gently, letting it slide noiselessly open.

It really couldn’t be as easy as just walking in the front door. A _noiseless_ front door.

No shouts were raised, no noise was heard. Clay peered in and made the all-clear sign before stepping in, treading as lightly as possible. Cougar shoved in after him, shoulder-checking Aisha which seemed a bit excessive, but yeah, with their fearless leader distracted it might not be best to let her be so close to him.

With a sniff, Aisha stalked in after them, and Jake backed up the steps, watching the yard, and stepped in the front door before nudging it closed with his foot.

No fucking way. Something was wrong, and Jake was being wound up tighter and tighter. Worse, he knew it, too – could feel the change itching underneath his skin, Horse in the back of his mind dancing, and the (even stranger) feeling of feathers ruffling and settling, ruffling and settling, at the back of his neck.

As they moved as a group of four, they turned a corner and ran into two wolves – obviously patrolling, and just as obviously not taking it seriously. Before they could even make noise, Aisha had one neck slit open to the spine and Cougar emptied four bullets coated with the werewolf-killing poison into the other.

Cougar stepped back, moved to the closest door, and leaned against it for two minutes. Aisha moved impatiently, obviously wanting to move faster, but Jake and Cougar both glared at her – and at Clay, who seemed infected by her impatience.

Gently, Cougar eased the door open. The room was deserted, and while it was probably useless to stuff dead bodies into a room considering that everyone else around was a werewolf and could smell the blood, there really was no reason to just leave two dead bodies lying in the hallway. If for nothing else, they wouldn’t be tripping over the bodies in their hasty getaway.

With an irritated huff, Aisha waited until Cougar had stepped out of the room before striding off, leaving Jake to rush out of the room and close the door behind him. It took them about five more minutes – howls started going up, outside the house, and there was the heavy tread of running footsteps above them, though they didn’t run into anyone else as they moved through the halls – and then the door that they tried was an empty control room, hundreds of screens on the walls, showing different rooms. More than a few were cutting in and out, static-filled, and Aisha sighed in satisfaction as she closed the door behind them and leaned against it. “Alright. Figure out which one Max is in and draw us a route there. Hurry up.”

“Geez, okay, woman, calm your – hold your horses,” Jake muttered under his breath, taking off his backpack and unzipping it to pull out his netbook. While it booted up, he moved to the controls, clicking his tongue against his teeth as he rotated each camera around, getting a view of the rooms that were under watch. “You said technology didn’t work well around magic?”

“More or less,” Aisha said tightly.

Cougar put a hand on Jake’s shoulder and Jake took in a deep breath, held it, and then let it out in a sigh. “Okay. Though, obviously, technology works fine around you, so I’m not sure why—”

“Active magic, or magic being cast at the moment, mess with technology,” Aisha interrupted tersely. “Ignore the fuzzy screens because vampires are not actively magical and can’t cast magic at all.”

“Touchy, touchy,” Jake muttered, moving through the screens as fast as possible while his netbook, now open and hacking into the computer systems through the computer tower he’d plugged it into, began uploading all the information it could find into a secure place in his private darknet. “Okay. Okay. Alright, you’re gonna go out that door and go the left, go until you see some twisty stairs, go up the stairs. Then I think it’s the – fourth door? Whatever, sixth dark recess on your left. Probably only four doors, but maybe there are six doors and those two other rooms don’t have cameras in them. I’ll stay in contact with you the whole rest of the way, and I’ll keep an eye out if anyone’s heading your way. Ah, wait, wait—”

Aisha, who’d had her hand on the doorknob, stopped and glared. “What?”

“Patrol, walking by – room’s soundproofed, though. They can’t hear us.”

The two wolves stopped in front of the door and glowered.

“They’re werewolves,” Clay snapped. “They can smell us.”

Aisha jerked open the door and Clay and Cougar both emptied their clips in the two men who were standing outside the door. One of them managed a choked off howl before he died, which was answered by several howls around the house.

“Fuck,” Aisha growled. “We did what you wanted, we got you here, and they know we’re here, so you know what, just fucking keep us updated on the comms. C’mon, Clay!”

Without waiting for an answer, she went out of the door, at least heading in the way that Jake had directed her, and Clay started to follow her and then stopped, hesitating.

“Clay, man, is something – up? Something wrong?”

Probably not the best time to be asking, considering that they were already here, in the middle of the op, but they could find Max again. It’d be hard, but they could do it, and Jake would rather pull everyone out and make certain that everything was fine and on the up and up than go for the kill and end up on a suicide run.

With a frustrated growl, Clay turned away and started running after Aisha.

Jake narrowed his eyes and turned to Cougar. “Did you—?”

Cougar looked up from where he’d unslung his pack and gotten out his guns – not his rifle, because by the time anyone came to the door there was no point to a long-range weapon – and tilted his head quizzically at Jake.

“Never mind,” Jake mumbled. Cougar hadn’t seen it, and really – why would Clay’s eyes be pink?

***

Pooch obviously wasn’t bothering with radio silence anymore; he had found the notes and a sample of the biological weapon, had them stowed, and he’d plugged in Jake’s drive so Jake could clean up any files from the computer. Still, for a vampire that played in the human world, there was quite a large amount of paper lying around.

…Then again, a vampire wouldn’t use a computer all that much anyway, Jake supposed.

Cougar was keeping an eye on the door. In fact, it was pretty boring in the booth, quietly directing Clay and Aisha out of the way of wandering patrols, hinting that they should leave crisscrossing scent trails to keep the wolves from sniffing out _exactly_ where they were unless they were right on top of one another. Cougar would sometimes open the door and wander down one hallway or the other to take out another patrol. Even then, for all that it was boring, it only took seven minutes for Clay and Aisha to get up to the second floor. Aisha had Clay stop, murmuring something under her breath and then drawing hastily on the ground with a bone she had plucked from her hair.

And, again, Jake would have _sworn_ that Clay’s eyes were a little bit pink.

Behind him, Cougar huffed.

Jake turned. “You okay?”

Cougar squinted at the screen and nodded slowly.

Jake jumped on that like a dog on a ball, taking his mic out so that he wouldn’t alert Clay or Aisha. “No wait, you saw that too, right? I’m not seeing things? Pink eyes? Like weird pink eyes? Glowing floaty pink lines coming from Clay’s eyeballs?”

Cougar raised an eyebrow at Jake.

“No, I’m serious – you saw it, right? I’m not crazy?”

Cougar clicked his tongue lazily and turned back to watching the screens that showed the hallways near the control room’s door.

Grumbling under his breath, Jake folded his arms and put his mic back in. “No, down that way. Your left. Fourth door. Sixth dark recess. On your left.”

Jake watched them go down the hall slowly, Aisha mumbling under her breath as she moved. Clay followed, keeping an eye on her back.

“Patrol coming around, Clay,” Jake murmured into his mic.

Clay raised his guns and when the two wolves came around the corner – fast – Clay dropped one and had his knife out to deal with the second one.

“That door, Aisha – no, that door, you forget I can see into these cameras and he is sitting _right there_ – no, your left,” Jake snapped.

“Piss off, Jensen,” Aisha growled back, and then she tilted her head at Clay.

Clay kicked the door in and they sprayed the inside of the room with bullets.

There came a familiar roar – and in the small, static-filled picture on the screen, Jake saw Roque jump out of nowhere (must’ve been out of range of the camera, shit, those wolfsbane bullets better work on him) and then too fast for him to follow, it was just Clay and Aisha and Roque in the room, Roque in wolf form tearing at Aisha’s arm and Clay swinging a machete at Roque’s spine.

_“Go track down Max! For me, track down Max!”_

Aisha’s voice came through the tinny microphone, over their communication units, and her eyes glowed pink – and then Clay’s eyes _glowed the same color_.

“Okay, fuck what you say, I saw that and something’s wrong!” Jake snarled, grabbing his gun and pack, shoving everything into his pack.

Cougar stared at him and Jake squared his shoulders. “Look, you’re going to have to trust me – something weird happened to Clay and we need to go make sure he’s okay.”

At that, Cougar lifted his shoulder casually. “Lead the way.”

They got to the room in record time, mostly because no one was bothering to keep quiet anymore. In his earpiece, Pooch was snarling something about concentrations of chemicals and that he wasn’t a chemical bioengineer, he had no idea what any of this shit meant, but if Jake spared any time to answer he honestly couldn’t remember at all. There either weren’t any more wolves in the mansion or they hadn’t reached them yet, which was completely fine by Jake. Storming into the room Aisha and Clay had been in – at least before Clay disappeared after Max – Roque was there in his animal form, bleeding heavily, fighting with Aisha who didn’t nearly look as beat up as Roque did.

Before either combatant could react to Jake and Cougar’s appearance, Jake leveled his gun at Aisha. “Explain what just happened on those screens, Aisha, or I’m going to shoot you right now and hope that fixes whatever it is you did to Clay.”

Cougar was covering Jake, he knew, keeping an eye on Roque – but for all that Roque had betrayed them, Roque hadn’t made a move towards them yet. He backed up to crouch against the opposite wall, panting roughly, and Jake glanced once over at Cougar to make certain Cougar was fine before focusing on Aisha, who looked annoyed and indignant at the interruption.

“Have you lost your mind?” she demanded. “Max is getting away, and instead of helping me so we can go help Clay, you pull a _gun_ on me?”

“Tell me I’m crazy. Tell me that Clay’s eyes didn’t glow when you told him to track down Max. Tell me that Clay hasn’t been acting funky since we landed on this island,” Jake said, voice calm, even though inside he was shaking. Aisha had termed herself a battle-witch – he didn’t know what that meant, but he was pretty sure it had something to do with her ability to do battle, and he still had problems shifting without mixing his two forms. Of the four people in the room, only Roque could probably do enough damage to slow her down, and he wasn’t even on their side.

She looked at him a long moment, eyes narrowed, and her lip curled up. “I forgot you had the blood in you,” she said, voice cold.

That was good enough confirmation that she’d done something to Clay that was, at the very least, not helpful. Jake squeezed the trigger.

Her hand came up in a flash, a shouted word in a different language forming blue lines that coalesced into a shield in time to block the bullets. As the misshapen chunks of metal clattered to the floor, Roque was suddenly on her again, teeth clamped in her calf. She let out a scream of rage and pain, twisting around and shoving what looked like a ball of pink lightning in Roque’s face. Roque snarled horribly and jumped away.

Cougar shot three times, and of the three managed to hit her once, in her upper shoulder, but Jake was shouting for Cougar to go after Clay, make sure he stayed alive. Cougar visibly hesitated, but it was clear _someone_ had to go after Clay, and since both Roque and Jensen seemed to have the same goal at the moment, Cougar nodded and followed in the direction that Clay had went.

“You humans really think that you can do something to stop gods?” Aisha sneered, backing into a corner. “You know nothing about our world, about how to combat creatures from within our world. Perhaps Max hasn’t succeeded in his goals, but eventually one of us will, and you will all cower before us like the ants that you are.”

She’d already proved she could hold her own against bullets. For a minute, Jake considered her, taking in her measure, and then he smiled, cold and tight, setting his gun down. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, feeling the horse flex under his skin, the anger rising up through his veins to make the transition fast and furious. “But you sure as hell won’t be there to see it.”

Roque let out a terrible howl and leapt at her. She whirled, a piece of bone from her hair lengthening into a staff that she used to knock Roque away, but then Jake was there in horse form, hind legs kicking viciously and catching her on her upper arm. She whipped back to face a striking Roque and ended up with Jake’s teeth snaking out to bite down on her hand. Crying out in pain and shock, she turned her body to claw at Jake’s nose and eyes with violet-glowing daggers that materialized out of thin air. Doing so left her open to Roque, who immediately took advantage of that and latched onto her lower leg, laying it open to the bone.

Her shriek was desperate and agonized instead of angered, and her movements lost the coordination of battle and became instead haphazard motions designed only to get away from the pain. Jake couldn’t find it in himself to pity her – not when her magic glowed pink, not when Clay’s eyes had glowed pink, not when Clay had been off the whole evening.

“You can’t kill me!” she hissed, eyes in slits and left arm hugged tight to her chest from pain.

Jake whinnied and twisted, back legs corkscrewing to lash out again. Before his legs landed, Aisha shouted something in some unrecognizable language – not Arabic, not Farsi, not Russian, not any language based on Latin, and that pretty much exhausted the different languages Jake could recognize on hearing them – and there was a flash of light.

When Jake could see again, Aisha was nowhere in the room and Roque was running out the door that Clay and Cougar chased Max.

Cursing mentally, Jake shifted back into human form, reaching for clothes mentally and managing to get on a pair of jeans and his favorite geek t-shirt – why not the combat gear he had been wearing earlier, Jake didn’t know, but he was just glad he wasn’t running around buck naked – and he scooped up his gun (sans bullets, he emptied the gun at Aisha, and fuck but that was why he wanted combat gear, he had extra clips in the belt) to run out after them.

***

The door led to a hallway, which had multiple doors but Clay’s, Cougar’s, and Roque’s scents led straight forward. Jake ran, lending strength to his legs from his horse form, hoping to catch up in time to help Cougar and Clay against Roque and Max continued. Then again, Roque could have attacked him back there and instead chose to come down the hallway. That wasn’t the tactician Jake knew; you took out opponents when you had them in front of you. You didn’t run and give them a chance to follow and regroup.

Then again, Jake didn’t have bullets. Maybe Roque discounted him because of that. It wouldn’t be the first time Jake was underestimated because he didn’t have a gun in his hand. Then again, it would be the first time it had ever happened from one of his own team. They knew the destruction Jake could wreak with his horse form, and his skills at hand-to-hand combat.

A door hung open up ahead, the dim emergency lights the only illumination. Jake dashed through the door and came to a sudden stop as he found himself on a catwalk in one of the warehouses.

 _Shit_. Looking around, he tried to catch sight of movement, tried to catch the hint of sound – something, anything, to give him a clue where everyone was.

There was a low growl from somewhere on the floor of the warehouse, and, as quietly as he could, Jake made his way to the hanging stairs to make his way down. As he got further down, he could hear ragged pants, muffled grunts, and the clatter of boots on the cement. Throwing on an extra burst of speed, Jake rounded a corner made up of crates and tarp and nearly ran headlong into the middle of Cougar and Roque tearing into each other in their animal forms. Beyond them, Clay was slicing at Max with his pure metal blade, and there were lines of blood on Max’s clothes. Clay was obviously the worst off in that battle, however; one arm was tucked tight along Clay’s ribs and he was limping badly.

Max’s eyes jerked over to Jake and he bared his teeth in a fierce snarl, elongated canines flashing and eyes glowing. Jake stumbled to a stop, hesitating for one minute, which was when Clay gained the upper hand and stabbed his blade deep into Max’s chest.

Max let out a screech, an echoing cry that raised the hair on Jake’s arms and made him jump forward, trying to reach Clay as Clay bore Max down to the ground. Before he could reach them, Roque slammed into Jake’s side, knocking him back and into a stack of boxes.

But that gave Cougar the time he needed, and he dashed forward like tan lightning, as Max grabbed a syringe and tried to stab it into Clay’s neck. Instead, it ended up in Cougar’s flank, and Cougar let out a yowl, breaking away and slumping to the ground.

Jake gathered his legs underneath him and kicked out with the strength of his horse, catching Roque in the ribs hard enough to cave some in. Roque let out a pained, breathless cry, and rolled away, which gave Jake the space to launch himself over to Clay’s side.

With another inhuman shriek, with an undercurrent of hissing and snarling, Max broke free from Clay and launched at Jake, who twisted enough to keep from getting his throat torn out but not enough to keep from getting those elongated canines from sinking into his chest and tearing off a huge chunk of flesh. Jake shouted in pain and surprise, falling heavily to his knees and completely unresisting as Max placed a hand around his neck and _squeezed_.

Out of nowhere, Clay brought his machete around like a baseball bat, slicing into Max’s throat and lodging it there.

Max let out a choking sound, staring at Jake with wide, disbelieving eyes, and Clay yanked the machete out of the meat of Max’s neck to hack at it again, completely beheading Max.

Letting the body topple onto Jake.

“Fuck, Clay,” Jake said breathlessly, voice hoarse from the near-crushing his vocal chords had sustained and from the pain of having a good piece of his flesh ripped brutally off. “Fuck. What. The. Fuck. What’s _wrong_ with you?”

Clay stared at Jake, looking lost. “I – I had to get Max.”

“Fuck that, you know you don’t run ahead without backup! What the _hell_?!”

Clay focused on Jake’s shoulder. “You’re losing blood too fast. We need to get you healed up.”

There was movement from the side, and Clay whipped around, machete out, and snarled at Roque, “Stand down!”

The large wolf stared at Clay a long moment before sitting on its haunches and staring at them from Roque’s black eyes. Jake felt his vision grey out and then suddenly he was splayed out, shirtless. Only not really, because his shirt had been wadded up and pressed against his shoulder. The surroundings had changed to a different part of the warehouse, and Clay was suddenly leaning over him, frowning. “You okay, Jensen?” he asked gruffly.

“Cougs,” he breathed out. “Max stabbed Cougs. With something. Syringe.”

Clay blinked and then moved away. Time was fluid a moment more, and then Roque was suddenly leaning over Jake along with Clay.

“You’ve been an asshole,” Jake said accusingly.

Roque let out a laugh, and he was thinner than Jake remembered, eyes hollowed and haunted. “What happened with Cougar? He took off outta here like he was on fire.”

“Dunno,” Jake said, trying to sit up – only to realize that his shoulder and chest were practically on fire and he slumped back down. “Syringe. Got stabbed. Not sure with what. Don’t think it’s the ghoul formula but if it is we need to get an antidote to him before two hours pass.”

Roque frowned and looked off to the side, away from him and Clay. “Give me a few minutes,” he murmured, and then he was gone.

Which wasn’t great, but it gave Jake time to subtly try and figure out what the hell had happened with Clay. Clay, of course, seemed to sense that and he winced, shifting awkwardly.

“Soooo?” Jake asked, voice breathless as Clay’s shifting put more pressure against Jake’s wound.

“So what?” Clay asked.

Narrowing his eyes, Jake said flatly, “You threw common sense to the wind this entire mission. I don’t know what the hell happened, so an explanation would be awesome.”

“I don’t know what happened either, okay?” Clay said, groaning. “I just – it was important to find Max. That was – that was pretty literally the only thing on my mind.”

Jake raised an eyebrow at Clay, but was willing to let that go so he could ask about Roque. “And now Roque’s all buddy-buddy with us?”

“I dunno,” Clay sighed, scrubbing at his face roughly. “I give him orders and he follows them. I don’t know why. I don’t get it. But for right now it’s useful.”

“Huh,” Jake snorted, skeptical – but it wasn’t as if he was in any position to do anything about any of it.

“I can hear you talking about me,” Roque growled, and Jake couldn’t see him. He twisted his head to try and see and promptly passed out.

He woke up in Roque’s arms, moving out in the darkness. Awkwardly, he brought a hand up to paw at Roque’s chest. “Hey, hey, where are we going?”

“We’re getting off this island before the werewolves you guys haven’t killed yet tear you guys apart.”

Jake frowned and tried to look around. “Where’s Aisha?”

Roque’s chest vibrated with a violent growl. “Who cares?”

Finding no flaw in that sentence, Jake switched tack. “How about Pooch?”

“On the boat already,” came Clay’s voice from Jake’s feet. “He’s got all the notes, everything we need to make an antidote for what Max was cooking up here. We just need to get it put together.”

“Where’s Cougar?” Jake asked.

Silence answered his question.

Jake began to struggle to get out of Roque’s arms, and Roque hissed. It was Clay who said sharply, “Stand down, Jensen. You’re injured.”

“If I transform, it’ll heal up,” Jake grunted. “And if Cougs isn’t here, he’s out there somewhere, thinking that he’s going to die, and we need to get him out of here.”

“We can’t do that until we’ve got an antidote,” Clay replied, and now Jake could make out the dim shape of the colonel.

“That’s bullshit, sir,” Jake snapped. “I’m not leaving this island without Cougar.”

Roque huffed out a frustrated laugh.

Jake wiggled again, trying to get free, and Roque clutched at him tighter. Clay snarled at Jake. “We are getting off this island, corporal, and we will discuss this when we get onto the boat.”

“With all fucking due respect, _sir_ , I’m not getting on the fucking ship,” Jake grunted, twisting, and then he let out a broken gasp as a wave of agony washed over his body.

“No, I don’t think you understand the situation!” Clay growled, and he sounded desperate, apologetic, and furious. “Whoever it was that designed this new weapon set one of the bombs to go off, and we need to be clear of this island before it goes up, and we’ve got _maybe_ five minutes to do that!”

“All the more reason to find Cougar!” Jake said, and he knew that his own voice had gone tight and desperate.

There was silence a moment, and the sound of the ocean was louder. Jake tried to struggle again, but then Clay said softly, “You know what Cougar was injected with. If we’re lucky, we’ll get clear of the island in time to keep from being affected ourselves, and then when an antidote’s been found we’ll come back and find him. Alright? But we need to leave _now_.”

“Where the hell have you fuckers been?” Pooch’s voice called out, frantic. “We need to – fucking hell, is that _Roque_?!”

Jake gritted his teeth and _heaved_ , breaking free of Roque’s grip to fall onto the ground – dock. They were on the dock, and the hard wood jarred him bad enough that his vision began to grey out at the edges. When he saw Clay hunker down next to him, he gripped Clay’s sleeve. “Please,” he whispered, fighting the encroaching darkness. “We can’t leave him.”

“I’m sorry, son,” Clay said, voice breaking. “But I need to save those that I can.”

_Please don’t do this._

_Please…_

***

Jake woke to linen sheets and a crisp breeze coming in from the window, twilight spilling into the room. It wasn’t completely quiet in the house – there was a low murmur of sound from somewhere – but no one was in Jake’s room.

 _Cougar_.

Jake pushed up from the bed and let out a gasp of pain as the skin stretched on his right arm and chest. He hit into the night table and nearly went down, only he was too determined to do so. Standing, swaying, he took in a deep breath, blowing it out tightly, until everything stopped swimming in his vision. He was dressed in sweats and nothing else; his upper body, specifically his right side, was covered in swathes of bandages.

“Jensen?”

“Get me the fucking boat, Pooch,” Jake said, voice deadly calm.

There was a shuffling noise and then Pooch responded quietly, “We don’t know how long it will take for that compound to die out in the air.”

“How wide was the blast range?”

Pooch hesitated a moment before saying quietly, “We think that it wasn’t much more than one mile, spreading out to one mile before it loses its potency.”

“One mile radius pretty much covered that island, didn’t it?”

Tapping sounded – Jake didn’t turn around to see what it was. Then Pooch let out a soft sigh. “Pretty much. And we discovered what this new formula was, and what it was intended to do. After Aisha – left, Fadhil took off too. Only Samira’s still here, and I think that’s more because she’s not exactly a witch or wizard or whatever like they are. She’ll need to be physically taken home.”

“I’m not going anywhere except back to that island,” Jake repeated, and he turned back to look at Pooch with deadly serious eyes.

Pooch looked sympathetic but steely. “Jensen, we have an idea of what this thing is, and you don’t want to be walking into it. Samira’s contacting people that she thinks she can trust, and for right now—”

“We trust that she doesn’t want Cougar?” Jake said, and it was as if someone else was piloting his body, because his voice never got that cold before. “We trust her when she has _less_ tied to us than Aisha did – who did betray us? Or Clay, at least? We trust that she’s telling us the truth and not taking this, whatever it is, and uses it in her world? I’m not leaving Cougar up to her. Up to _any_ of you.”

Letting out a hard sigh, Pooch rubbed his head, scratching at the stubble.

“If it was Jolene. Tell me you wouldn’t do the same thing,” Jake snarled.

Pooch paled a little, but he swallowed. “I’d want to make certain I got her out safely, without fucking up. And you need to do the same. Cougar can – Cougar’s the most controlled person we’ve ever seen, and you know it. He can hold on another day while we hear back from—”

“Another _day_?!” Jake hissed, skin dancing as he fought from changing in anger. “How long have you guys just _left_ him there?”

“Out, Pooch.”

Relieved, Pooch turned and exited the room as Clay walked in, looking much, much older than Jake could ever remember seeing him.

Which didn’t mean a single goddamned thing, because Jake was across the room, grabbing Clay’s shirt and slamming him against the wall.

There was a growl, deep and inhuman – a werewolf, Jake recognized, but damned if he cared in the least about that – and a strong arm was suddenly against Jake’s throat, catching Jake in a headlock and beginning to exert pressure. That didn’t mean Jake was letting up – he shook Clay’s collar, hitting Clay’s head against the back of the wall. “This is _your_ fucking fault!” he shouted, and it took him a moment to realize that his eyesight was blurry because tears were pooling in his eyes. “You should’ve fucking stayed with the group, you shouldn’t have forgotten Cougar was even _there_ , you shouldn’t have dragged me off like that, and how fucking long did you keep me sedated?!”

Towards the end, his voice was growing hoarser as it was getting harder and harder to breathe, and by the end of it he wasn’t holding Clay off the ground anymore but clutching at Clay’s shirt, wheezing. Behind him, Roque stopped growling and instead took a step back, dragging Jake back with him, and Jake slumped in Roque’s hold, shaking and trying to draw in breath.

“You’re right,” Clay said quietly. “I should have mentioned that I’d been compromised right off the bat, instead of dismissing my suspicions. You’ve been sedated for the past six days – it would have been seven, only you needed something more than water in your system. And you’re bleeding, again. None of us know how to fix wounds where you’re missing flesh, Jensen.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Jake croaked, not lifting his head, even as Roque’s hold against his windpipe eased up. “None of it – I need to get Cougar back. Now.”

“We need you to do something else, first,” Clay replied, voice hard.

At that, Jake looked up, vision waving, and he spread his arms expressively. “What, Clay? What more can you possibly scoop out of me?”

Clay winced, but he forged on like the suicidal man he was. “We need your friend to analyze this compound. We need to make sure Samira isn’t lying to us about what it can do. We also need to locate a gas mask, because if you’re going to that island and the compound hasn’t degenerated in the air yet, you don’t want to succumb to it either. Alright? Once those two things happen, I’ll let you go. I’ll give you every bit of ammo I have, because there are still werewolves on that island, and I’ll give you the ship, and I’ll go home and tell Emily and Raina what you chose. We’ll part ways.”

Jake laughed bitterly. “That wasn’t a subtle dig at all, Clay. Losing your touch.” He breathed in deep and met Clay’s gaze defiantly. “And Emily would tell me not to lose Cougar. Raina would ask you why Cougar got left behind in the _first_ place.”

Clay breathed in deep and then let out his breath slowly. “Alright then.”

“And since when did we trust Roque?” Jake asked, ignoring the vicious growl behind him.

Heaving a sigh, Clay shook his head. “Since Roque obeys my orders. Apparently I take place of his alpha or – or something. Samira didn’t really explain why he latched back onto us.”

“Not onto _us_ ,” Jake dismissed. “Onto _you_.”

Clay inclined his head stiffly.

Jake had nothing more to say. He wasn’t going to be able to leave, not with his body shaking and trembling already from all the exertion he’d put it through, not with the right side of his chest feeling like it was on fire, burning at his bones. He needed their help, as much as it galled him to admit it, and the way to get Cougar back from whatever that syringe had done to him was somewhere in the notes Pooch had collected.

“Get me a computer,” he said in a flat voice.

***

It didn’t take him one day – it took him _four_ , and he chafed at every hour, unable to rest, nightmares making him claw awake and reach for someone who wasn’t there. Clay wisely stayed out of Jake’s way, but Roque would have an unnerving tendency to suddenly just _be_ there, staring at Jake and watching him closely. Pooch tried to offer platitudes and encouragement, but Jake wasn’t hearing it. The first thing he had done was email his friend, calling all favors to get the new compound – which they didn’t have, but they had the notes of its chemical makeup – analyzed and neutralized as soon as humanly possible. Then Jake had poured through the notes, looking for the key to the new compound.

If the old compound could be called a ghoul formula, this could be called a primeval formula. It was solely designed to revert anyone without a touch of innate magic – men, specifically, and possibly bitten werewolves, since they hadn’t been magic before the virus had twisted their DNA – into what was basically a Neanderthal. If there was rhyme or reason behind Max’s desire for such a formula, Jake couldn’t grasp it. He didn’t want to grasp it; he didn’t care. He just wanted Cougar safe, and if Cougar was being regressed to nothing more but an animal state, well…

Jake’s dreams were not nice.

Samira had started out as smirking and slinking around Jake as he stayed at his computer for twenty hours at a time, making cutting remarks about how Jake must not really love Cougar if he left him behind to such a fate. The second time she had made such a remark she’d been stupid enough to do it when Roque wasn’t there and Pooch had left.

Jake broke her arm in two different places and caved in the left side of her ribs.

Afterwards, Samira, like Clay, stayed out of Jake’s sight.

It was the third day that Jake’s friend had gotten back to him with the bad news that there was no antidote for this; it was designed to be permanent. _However_ , because it was still in the testing stage, it wasn’t stable. It might wear off. Max hadn’t had time to perfect it and refine it.

It was the fourth day that his friend confirmed that it had an incredibly short airborne-lifespan. Within a day it would have interacted too much with air molecules and degraded, the compound breaking up because of the particles in the air. That was all Jake needed to know: it might be wearing off of Cougar (even if it wasn’t, he was still bringing Cougar home) and Jake didn’t need a gas mask.

Jake had his bag packed, gear stowed, and arsenal in place within thirty minutes.

No one stopped him from walking down the dock to the rented boat. As he packed his gear around, he turned to see Pooch standing there with a bag of supplies in hand.

Jake stared Pooch down.

After a long moment, Pooch blew out a long breath and said heavily, “We shouldn’t have left Cougar behind. If we didn’t know that one of the air-dispersion devices were going to go off, we wouldn’t have. That’s no excuse, and I hope you find him and bring him home. By the time you get to the US, your name will be cleared; Clay’s already started those procedures and he’ll handle all of that. If our names don’t get cleared, I’ll leave word here, at this house, for you. When you get Cougar back, check there to know whether you’re heading to Canada or Vermont.”

“Canada,” Jake growled.

Pooch paused.

“Fuck the US and the army and fucking everyone. Cougar and I are done. We’re out.”

Slowly, Pooch nodded. “Alright, Jake.”

For a long moment, they stood there, facing off, and Jake finally ground out, “I’m bringing him home.”

“I believe you,” Pooch said, smiling bleakly. “If anyone can, it’s you. I expect you guys to visit the US, visit me sometime. Me and Jolene.”

Jake wanted to go, he did – he didn’t want to stay and think about Clay and Roque. But his team was too much a part of him for him to just let them go, even over a betrayal like this one. With a snarl, he took the bag Pooch had been holding out and asked roughly, “And Roque?”

Shrugging, Pooch let out a heavy sigh. “He’s not turning back into a human. He’s a werewolf, and Clay’s probably going to retire and take Roque with him. Whatever they did to him – Roque’s imprinted, or something. He needs to be around Clay, and it frustrates him. Clay’s trying to make him independent, but there’s not a lot of clarity whether it can even be achieved. I don’t understand the mechanics of werewolf-ism. Samira has her own way home, and she’ll be leaving soon, and she’s not answering questions. We don’t really want to ask her questions, in any case. So.” Pooch glanced in the direction of the island and shifted nervously. “Well.”

Jake breathed in deep and let it out, tension bleeding from his frame as he got up onto the docks and grabbed Pooch in a bear hug. “Stay safe, Pooch,” he said gruffly.

“Shouldn’t I be telling you that?” Pooch returned weakly, but his hug back was terrified and desperate. “Don’t die, Jake, or I’ll come back here and find a way to bring you back to life to kill you again. You bring Cougar home.”

“I will,” Jake promised, and got back into the boat to start it up.

Pooch stayed on that dock until Jake couldn’t see the island anymore.

***

The island that he and his team had been at ten days ago looked the same. Well, not entirely the same; it was daylight, and it had been night when they’d come. But overall, everything was in the same place and there was nothing overtly forbidding about the lush island environment.

Somewhere on this tiny rock was Cougar. Also on this rock were at least ten werewolves who were most likely feral. Maybe twelve; Roque could provide the number of werewolves there had been, but Clay and Pooch couldn’t remember how many had been killed.

Ten or twelve feral werewolves. A feral Cougar, possibly _in_ cougar form.

Jake grabbed his pack, tethered the boat offshore with the extra supplies, and made his way to the buildings first.

***

He cleared all warehouses (finding Cougar’s hat in one of them and he nearly broke down crying right there, had to stop and take in deep breaths, searching for the cold anger that had been sustaining him for so long), the security building, the barracks, and the manor house (killing two werewolves, purely by luck than by anything else). Then he burned all the structures to the ground except the manor house, which he then secured to make certain no one, feral or not, could get in without tripping his alarms, which would then sound on his PDA and let him know. No sense in leaving the other structures up; Jake would have to regularly check them to make certain Cougar hadn’t hid out in them, and they afforded places where feral werewolves could hunker down in and surprise him.

Jake didn’t need that kind of surprise.

Once he’d set the alarms on the manor house, he found one room that was more heavily fortified than any other. There, he stored the majority of the electronic equipment, the food, and went back to the ship, moored out in the water, and brought the rest of the supplies and weapons into the manor house. Heavily fortifying the windows and door, making sure that even if someone got into the manor house that they wouldn’t get into _this_ room, he grabbed a light pack, filled it with a tent, a machete, ammunition, MREs, some clothes, and Cougar’s hat. Then, he closed down the manor house behind him, looked at the still smoking structures, and then turned to head inland.

The island Max had chosen as a base of operations was relatively small. Jake could probably jog from one end to the other within one day, give or take four or five hours, if he never slowed down and never took a break. Only the edge of the island where the house had been built had been cleared; it was still thick jungle, overgrown and lush, everywhere else. It had probably been kept as a barrier out of expediency as well as protection from anyone approaching the buildings from any other direction than straight from the well-guarded docks. The jungle also admirably prevented easy satellite scanning and other surveillance methods. There was a lot of variance in the geography, high rises and deep valleys, and Jake soldiered on until he’d reached a ridge of rock that had caves and other niches. He picked one out, made certain he wasn’t sharing with another predator, and then took out the map he had in his khakis.

He’d already created a grid reference, and he checked off the boxes that contained the cleared ground and the buildings. Then, he figured out where his cave was on the map, marked it with a dot, and stripped down.

The problem with trying to track down what was, essentially, a wild animal that was also a predator, was that the territories of said predators could be extensive and large, or very small and concentrated. Jake would have to go through the whole island, looking for a fresh scent trail, and then track that scent trail until he could find Cougar, wherever he ended up being. Tracking by scent, while not a natural ability either his horse of his bird had, was the only thing he had right now. If he had had training in hunting large game, or had actually been a dog like he was supposed to have been…

Could have, should have, would have. No use for any of them now.

Jake folded his clothes, stowed them on top of the stuff already in his bag, and hooked up the bag on the nearest tree so that when he transformed – which still hurt, still pulled at his torn muscles, still made him unbearably weary – he could slip his neck into it as a horse and make his way off to traveling through the underbrush, going to the first grid and working his way through.

What followed were very long, torturous days and weeks, as Jake went over every inch of the grid as carefully as he could, marking out scent trails that were and were not fresh, both of Cougar and of the werewolves. Even in his feral side, Jake thought ruefully, Cougar was too smart to just give Jake an easy trail back to wherever he was denning. No, Jake’s map was much more colorful by this point, blue lines marking the scent of werewolves (he’d killed three others so far; otherwise, they generally stayed away from Jake and Jake ignored them in turn) and green lines marking places and paths that had Cougar’s scent. He was trying, desperately, to make heads or tails of the different areas he’d caught Cougar’s scent. It didn’t help that he was a horse; at some point, he realized glumly, he was going to have to physically climb the trees and see if he could catch some trail there. Certainly the upper canopy of trees was thick enough in places to block out sunlight entirely, and cougars were mountain climbers.

It wasn’t until he’d been there for a month and a half, day in and day out searching for Cougar, that he woke up one morning to see a cougar standing at the mouth of his cave.

_It figures that Cougar would find me instead of the other way around._

“Cougs?”

Jake winced; his voice was raspy and hoarse from disuse. Cougar cocked his head, golden eyes holding no trace of the calm, controlled man Jake knew and called his lover.

Fighting back tears, Jake smiled weakly and sat up – slowly. He didn’t want to startle Cougar. “You certainly don’t look like me.”

Which was true simply because Cougar wasn’t in human form, but beyond that, Cougar’s coat was glossy and thick, and he looked strong, full. Jake had dropped quite a bit of weight, because – what with fighting with other werewolves (and Cougar) for fresh meat – the MREs had long run out. It had gotten to the point that Jake was considering eating grass in horse shape and hoping that, in that form, it wouldn’t taste like grass and leaves.

Not that he knew if any of these plants were safe to eat, but at least there wouldn’t be jimsonweed here.

“Did I make you curious enough to come looking for me?” Jake asked, folding his arms and crossing his legs, watching as Cougar took half a step into the cave and paused. “I actually think I’m getting closer to finding your den, wherever you made it. Give me some more time. Another week, week and a half. I think I can figure it out. I’m not as useless in roughing it as everyone thought I was. Well, that’s obvious—”

Jake talked and talked, for the first time since he came to the island. Part of it was just relief – Cougar was alive, not dead, not killed by starvation or werewolves or some weird poisonous jungle creature or the other. The other part was being able to speak; it was as if seeing Cougar, getting confirmation of Cougar’s status, released the words and gave him someone to talk to.

Sometime in the middle of his rant, Cougar had come fully into the cave, though no further than the mouth of the cave, and curled up, golden eyes watching Jake curiously – and without recognition. Jake refused to let that hurt and instead slowly stood up.

In a flash, Cougar had leapt out of the cave and had disappeared.

***

That day, Jake had immediately transformed into his horse form and tried to follow Cougar’s trail – which had, unfortunately, led Jake to a tree and no farther. Jake had no tracking skills through the brush, since all his tracking skills revolved around men and hunting them down. Instead, he refused to let himself cry and crawled back down the tree trunk, transformed back into a horse, and made his way over to the few fish traps he had set at various points on the island.

Every day after that, for two weeks, Cougar would show up in the morning and sit there, staring at Jake for long periods of time, before leaving the minute that Jake did something other than sit there and talk. Jake tried to keep his chatter up-beat and happy, speaking more than he ever had in one go for Cougar, but it was getting harder and harder to hold out against depression and disillusionment, when there was nothing but an animal behind Cougar’s eyes and it had been two months since Jake had made his way to this island.

Then, one day when he was checking his traps, he was set on by one of the werewolves still roaming the island. He’d gotten complacent, in that he’d been pretty certain this trap was outside of any territory that the werewolves normally traveled, and so he’d been in human form when the too-lean wolf burst out of the underbrush and went for his throat.

There was a hair-raising scream, and tawny fur dropped past Jake’s line of sight to land on the werewolf’s back, breaking it audibly. Jake immediately brought his machete around and sliced through the throat – and fell forward as a werewolf launched at him from behind.

It was instinct more than anything that had him twisting and transforming in one smooth move, newly hooved-feet kicking to catch the werewolf in the skull and ribs. Frustration and anger rose and he reared, bringing both of his fronthooves squarely down on the skull of the werewolf in question. Sadly, it wouldn’t kill – only pure metal would – but it made Jake feel viciously better in some small-minded part of him.

Panting, flanks heaving (it still hurt to transform, especially since he’d never given his muscles time to recover from losing a chunk of his flesh from his chest; the scar was hideous and he had a noticeable depression in his chest), he slowly transformed back and sunk to the ground, breathing hard. The transformation had snapped the strap of his bag and the drain from the adrenaline had Jake sitting on the ground, naked, and beginning to tremble.

Cougar – who had torn the throat of one werewolf out with his teeth and then turned to separate the spinal cord with a decisive bite to the back of the neck – stood near Jake’s kill, looking at it with teeth bared.

“Give me a second,” Jake muttered, reaching tiredly for his machete.

With a chuff of air, Cougar lowered his head, snapped the neck with his teeth, and then waited for Jake to sever both heads entirely.

“At least we’re down two werewolves,” Jake sighed as he stood up from the corpses, wiping sweat from his forehead with his upper arm. He was naked, concentration shot which meant he hadn’t reached for clothes when he’d also reached for his human form, and the bugs were going to eat him alive if he didn’t get clothes on. “Maybe I can salvage the strap. Or sew it up. Something. I’m pretty ingenious.”

As he was speaking, Cougar backed up, eyes narrowed at him, and Jake paused. Where had Cougar come from? Unless it was…

“Have you been _following_ me? All this time?” Jake asked, aghast.

Cougar licked his lips and eyed Jake warily.

Jake didn’t know what he was feeling – he wanted to scream, to beg Cougar to recognize him, to wrap arms around Cougar’s neck and never let go, to beat at Cougar until Cougar apologized for this rollercoaster ride of emotions Jake was experiencing – and in the end he slumped, shoulders rounded and hands limp against his side. “Well,” he said, and his voice cracked. Pausing to steady his voice, he continued roughly, “Well, you’ll remember when you’re ready, I suppose.”

He ignored the research that had shown Max had been trying to make that newest formula permanent. Why, for what reason, for what _purpose_ – Jake didn’t know, and he didn’t care. It couldn’t be permanent. He wouldn’t entertain those thoughts, not now, not when it was going to break him if he kept thinking about it. Instead, he put his faith in that it was the first prototype. Surely there were some flaws in it _somewhere_.

About to turn away, he paused and stared closely at Cougar. The big cat hadn’t moved, and in fact didn’t even look focused on Jake at the moment. And it looked, almost, as if…

“Are you trying to transform?” Surprise warred with ecstatic hope as Jake leaned forward, intensely focused on how the light brown fur was turning into the darker color of Cougar’s skin. How long he stood there, he didn’t even care – in the end, Cougar crouched before him in human form, naked, hair tangled and matted and deeply tanned from the sun.

“Cougs,” Jake whispered, starting to reach out, but when Cougar’s head came up, his teeth were bared in a snarl and his eyes weren’t brown, but gold. A cougar inhabiting a man’s body, now, and Jake froze. Was this better? He had Cougar’s body back, but not his mind?

He’d take it. Anything away from animal was a step forward. He wasn’t going to look a gift in the mouth.

 

***

Cougar didn’t stay with him. It was too much to hope he would, but it still made Jake curl up in the cave he’d staked out as his base while in the jungle and stare dry-eyed at the dark sky. It’d been two months. Had Clay gotten their names cleared? Could Emily and Raina head home now? Would they hate him for not coming back?

The next morning, Cougar appeared again – in cougar form, though when he crossed the threshold he eyed Jake closely before transforming into human form.

Jake would take what he could.

***

Jake was pretty sure there weren’t any other werewolves on the island – he’d killed nine, total, and he wasn’t certain if they’d already died of starvation, if their fellows had killed off a few, or if Cougar had taken care of some of them. In any case, he hadn’t been attacked anymore, his horse form couldn’t come across any fresh werewolf scents, and the mansion had remained undisturbed. He talked now, about anything and everything, down to reciting his multiplication tables and going over the bits of science manuals he could remember. He didn’t know if Cougar was still following him around – in human or cougar form – but he figured he had a good chance of Cougar staying on his tail. He was pretty much the only new, unexplainable thing in the entire jungle here.

“Bet Pooch is grilling now. It’s near the end of summer up there. Raina’s preparing for school. Don’t know what the hell Roque and Clay are doing. Don’t much care. Alright, not really – I do care, but godfuckingdammit Roque was horrible when he was on the other side and he nearly killed you. But he did help me attack that bitch. Wonder if she ended up dying. We did a lot of damage, but she already proved how much she could heal with us. I really hope she stays fucking far away from Clay now. Roque should keep her away, I suppose. Wonder if Clay and Roque visit Pooch sometimes. He made the best steaks, remember?”

“Si.”

“I mean, we—” Jake came to a complete stop and whipped around to see Cougar standing there, naked, with guilty brown eyes and arms defensively crossed across his abdomen.

“Cougar,” Jake breathed.

Silently, Cougar inclined his head.

Jake threw himself at Cougar, knocking the younger, slighter man onto the ground, burying his face in the junction of Cougar’s throat.

“Shh,” Cougar whispered, stroking the back of Jake’s head. “Don’t cry. Please. _Mi amado_ , please.”

“You fucking bastard,” Jake choked out, clutching tight to Cougar’s shoulders and muffling his words in Cougar’s chest.

It was dark before either of them moved.


	42. Chapter 42

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And, this concludes it all. I think I managed to get all the loose ends and explain them as best I could from what the Losers figured out. There are still some holes (namely, Max's motivation, and Aisha's motivation) but those remain unknown to the Losers. If I ever actually manage to put up the deleted scenes bit, that's where those answers will end up.
> 
> Once again, thank you everyone for sticking with me through it all! 274 Word pages in total, and 174k+ words in total!

This was the puzzle Jake cobbled together – minus a few crucial pieces, plus a few extra or unimportant ones:

The reason that Max had chosen to try and make humans werewolves, then into shapeshifters, then into ghouls, and then into primal Neanderthals remained unknown. The how was clearer – potions. Motherfucking potions, made in such a way that when vaporized they were still potent. Since potions weren’t every intended to work on non-magical people, he’d needed to find a witch to design the correct potion and find leverage against her to force her to do it. That witch was still at large and unknown. The secret of making potions work on humans went with her, and that made Jake very uneasy. Still. No inexplicable or crazy cases popped up that could have been the result of magical meddling. Jake would take that as a minor win.

The why of Roque’s defection to Max, and then defection again back to Clay, rested on the need for all werewolves to have a pack. Wade had transformed Roque, and that had made Wade Roque’s alpha. Wade had ordered Roque to obey Max, and Max had had that reinforced by a magical geas that bound Roque even more tightly. Yet when Max had died, Roque had reverted to his “original alpha” – Clay.

Aisha’s betrayal was – not completely strange, or unexpected, but the reasons behind it were still a mystery. She had gone after Max because Max had killed her father, because her father had gained too much information about Max and was trying to use that information to extort something – money, magical power, whatever – from Max otherwise he’d go to the Council (yes, apparently, there was a Council with a capital C) and give them all the information they’d need to kill Max remotely. Instead, Max had sent the team that had also been sniffing too close to his operation to take out the other contender that had gotten too close. They were all supposed to have died.

What Aisha had done to Clay was still unclear, but the way Clay described it, it sounded like she had put some kind of geas on him in the same way that Max had some geas on Roque. Why Jake had been able to see Clay’s eyes glowing pink, Jake had no idea. He was just thankful he’d seen it at all, that he’d noticed something was affecting Clay. He still felt slightly (not all that much, not after Clay had made him leave Cougar behind) bad that he hadn’t gotten what Clay had been trying to tell him at the beginning of their mission.

Cougar had been affected, badly, by the potion. He was still slightly feral – he responded with violence more often than not, and there were days where he could barely string together words together. Then again, Cougar had been, in a way, close to that anyway. Jake counted it as a win and learned to work around the days that Cougar prowled the house – yes, the Canadian house, Jake and Cougar had gone back there – in his cougar form.

Clay had indeed managed to clear their names. He had just needed to prove that the person who supplied the formula to the army had also ordered the hit in Bolivia because he’d been building a new, worse formula. There were enough notes and evidence to back that up; all the Losers’ names had been cleared. All of them had retired from active duty.

Jake’s chest never fully healed. There was about a fist-sized depression on the pectoral muscle, and the flesh was deadened to sensation. Cougar had taken to licking over it, over and over, whether in apology or gratefulness that Jake hadn’t died from blood loss, Jake didn’t know. He told Cougar it wasn’t his fault. Cougar didn’t believe him. Of course.

(Cougar told Jake it wasn’t his fault that Cougar had been left on the island. Jake didn’t believe him.)

(Of course.)

Fadhil and Samira had disappeared, less dramatically than Aisha, but it was very obvious that once Max was dead Samira was through with them. Fadhil had hung around, but Pooch had driven him off. Pooch had suspected that Fadhil had wanted to study the potions that had been modified for areal dispersion. Fadhil had then disappeared off the map. Not that the Losers had any hope of tracking him down. Jake kept a line out for him, though.

Raina was an elemental witch – which, apparently, was what Jake and Emily’s mother had been. Jake would have been one, too, if he hadn’t rejected his elemental guardian at a very young age. At that age, it had been a reaction because Jake had known his mother had left _because_ of her elemental, and Jake didn’t want to leave his family, didn’t want his elemental to make him leave his family the way that Jake’s mother had left hers. That didn’t change the fact that he had once been an air elemental, and that innate magic had fastened onto the formula and changed his form. Why a horse? Jake could only speculate – because the horse was close in temperament to dogs, in most cases, and horses were related to the wind and speed. His bird form was easier to explain – just because he rejected the elemental didn’t mean he’d blocked off his air tendencies, and apparently all elemental witches (yes, even the men were called witches) could transform into an animal. He had already had an animal form and just hadn’t realized it.

Jake lived with Cougar, in the Canadian house. Emily had been angrier than Raina about staying away for five months after Pooch, Clay, and Roque had returned. They had moved back to the States when Clay had told them that the danger was passed. Jake was sad that they didn’t stay but understanding; they’d made a home for themselves, in their little town. Jake had always stuck out in the town, and it had never fit him the way it seemed to fit Emily, and Raina had had friends there. It would have been cruel to keep them from their home and in Canada if there was a chance for them to go back.

Strong arms wrapped around Jake’s shoulders, and a bristly chin rested against Jake’s shoulder, leaning heavily. Jake sighed and leaned back from the computer, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “Time’s it?”

“Two in the morning, _mi amado_ ,” Cougar murmured into Jake’s ear. “Come to bed?”

Jake stared at all the unanswered questions, the heavy worry that the Losers had only staved off the confrontation between the magical and non-magical worlds temporarily. That knowledge was still out there, those motivations could still be there.

But there was nothing more he could do.

Closing the laptop, he turned and caught the bottom of Cougar’s lip in his mouth, sucking lightly. Cougar hummed into Jake’s mouth, deepening the kiss for a moment before pulling back. “Bed?” Cougar repeated.

“Yeah,” Jake sighed, standing up. “Yeah, let’s go. I’m tired.”


End file.
